


Crossing Cypress Creek

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, No explicit smut, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Suicidal Thoughts, Verbal Abuse, eren's 17 and levi's 18 so it's chill, ereri, i'll add characters as they come up too, i'll add tags as they come up for the most part, maybe some vague implied fade-to-black smut but nothing explicit, they live in alabama, this fic is one big long coping mechanism so bear with me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Eren, a troubled high school art student, is faced with the abuse of his alcoholic father along with the absence of his mother. Crushed under the weight of loneliness and his own self inflicted pain, he starts to expect that he's destined to the tragic end so many others have met. What he doesn't expect, however, is the arrival of a mysterious new kid at school. Much less does he expect their lives to become so entwined with each other.Between quiet walks in twilight-lit forests and nervous conversations spoken over music, life starts to seem almost bearable for the first time in forever - but that never lasts, does it?





	1. Last Night

**Author's Note:**

> this fic can be triggering as it deals with detailed depictions of self harm, parental abuse, and some other things. please don't read if you think it may trigger you. also, big thanks to jezze2302 on here, who i met through this fic; it wouldn't be the same without her help and i probably would've given up on it long ago.
> 
> thanks, and enjoy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A retelling of a series of events that led Eren to where he is at the time our story begins.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Most people are fortunate enough not to miss their mother every day. Yeah, they're fortunate enough to not fear the hand of their father, to not dread coming home, to not loathe waking up in the morning. Most people wear short sleeves when it's hot out. Most people have fond memories of their childhood. Most people don't flinch at a raised hand, a raised voice, a raised finger. Most people aren't fucking wrecks.

I am not most people. I was never so blessed. I'll try to keep this brief, God knows I hate reliving it.

One summer's night in August, a week after my thirteenth birthday, I woke up to the sound of my parents screaming at each other. This wasn't an uncommon thing to wake up to, but it sounded different that night. It sounded desperate. Their voices were hoarse. This fight was different, even a thirteen year old could pick up on that.

I shuddered at Mom's ear piercing screams. They sounded insignificant compared to the booming voice of Dad, of course, but her screams scared me more. Mom rarely lost her cool, but that night she did, and it showed. It terrified me. I pulled the polka-dotted sheets of my bed up to my chin and tried to pick out phrases from their arguing - it was a sort of game I would play with myself sometimes, to see how many words I could decipher.

I strained my ears, and decipher I did.

"You can't keep doing this! You can't continue this behavior, Grisha!"

I could tell Mom was crying - her voice was deeper than usual.

"Like hell I can! Nothing's fucking changed, Carla! Nothing is different! Why are you losing your shit now?! Why?! I'm the same goddamn person I was when you married me, Carla! Carla!"

Dad sounded hysterical - his voice cracked with every word he screamed. I didn't want to keep listening, but I was frozen and, really, had no choice. "Why!?" Dad repeated, even louder than before. His question sounded more like a statement, like a demand. "Answer me, bitch!"

Mom was silent, but then she spoke up. She spoke with authority that reminded me of my teachers. "Grisha," She began. "Your drinking behavior is out of hand. You're rarely home, but when you are home, you are drinking. It's affecting the kids. They - "

"Oh, hell, I'm rarely home because I'm bringing home the cash - and fuck the kids! They weren't supposed to fucking happen in the first place!"

Mom started to reply but I wasn't listening - Dad's words sent daggers through my young heart. It was something I'd never thought about. I never questioned whether Mikasa and I were 'planned' or not - I just... assumed we were, I guess. That wasn't something a thirteen year old kid was supposed to worry about - I know that now, but it didn't cross my mind at that time. I didn't know what to think. I just knew it hurt.

It was at those words, I shed my first tear that night - It must've been a new record, I usually started sobbing as soon as I heard them raise their voices. I wanted to call out for Mom but I didn't want to interfere. I hated hearing Dad yell, but it was a thousand times worse when he was yelling at me.

I shoved my face into my blankets in some effort not to make noise. They'd gone silent for a moment. Eventually, Mom spoke up again, still maintaining her calm voice, however hard she may have been crying. "I'm sorry, but I'm leaving. This is the last straw."

"Fine! I don't give a damn! Get out of my house, go!"

I suddenly felt nauseous. My heart dropped into my stomach and sat there like lead. The last straw.

"Mom?" I made a meek effort to shout for her, though it was more like a whisper. I heard no footsteps coming to my room.

No comforting voice saying, "Be there in a second, Eren."

I did hear the door slam.

 

That was the last I ever heard of my mother's voice. I don't know what happened after she slammed our front door, I don't know where she went, I don't remember the morning after that fight. I don't remember much, because there's not much worth remembering. The things I do remember are things I wish I could forget.

The next year was a blur that further reinforced my belief that thirteen was an unlucky number. We carried on like nothing had happened that night. Mikasa and I readied ourselves for school the next day, and every day after that. We walked ourselves to class. We also distanced ourselves from Dad, but he didn't much care. He rarely spoke to us in the first place. As we continued to fend for ourselves, even Mikasa and I spoke to each other less.

 

One day, early in the morning before it was time to leave for school, I looked up at Mikasa from across the cluttered dining room table. Without Mom around to straighten up the house, it had turned into a wreck.

"Mikasa," I mumbled. "D'you know about the fight? When Mom left?"

She didn't look up from her bowl of cereal as she replied, quietly, "Yeah."

  
At first, I didn't miss Mom much. I thought she would come back - I really did. She always came back. Sometimes she would go out with her friends for a night out on the town, to escape the stress I assume, but she always came back. She always came back. Always.

 

I kept telling myself that, but when my fourteenth birthday rolled around, the thought that maybe she wasn't coming back crossed my mind. Deep down, I knew it was true.

After I'd come to terms with her leaving - and by 'come to terms with,' I mean that I came to the realization that it was truth, not that I had accepted it - I started to question it.

Why had she left? Why didn't she come back? Why?

Some days it was all I could think about. I would zone out at school, completely lost in my own questions that would never get answered. At first, it seemed obvious that she had left due to Dad's behavior - that was what it seemed like, at least. Somewhere along the line, a new thought planted itself in my head.

Maybe she left because of me.

I was always the problem child. I was the one getting into fist fights at school, I was the one making C's an D's in every class, I was the one getting detention every other day. It was always me causing trouble, always me making the messes - Mikasa was perfect in every way, of course. She was older, she was flawless. It was me.

It seemed so right. It made perfect, total, complete sense. I had found the missing puzzle piece. She left because of me. I was bad enough for her to leave and not look back. I wasn't good enough to come back for, I wasn't salvagable. I wasn't planned. I felt like I'd discovered the answers to the universe - it was so obvious, I didn't know how I had gone an entire year without realizing it was my own damn fault she left.

It was my fault, and it killed me.

I hated myself for it - self loathing was a new feeling. It was different from the self pity I usually wallowed in. Self hatred was a vile, bitter thing. Self hatred felt like knives, and blood, and headaches, and the color red, and vomit. It made me hurt, and it made me _want_ to hurt. It made me feel like I _deserved_ to hurt. After all, I had hurt Mom - I hurt her enough to make her leave, and that hurt Mikasa. I'd hurt the last two people I ever wanted to hurt.

Yeah, I'd seen the kids at school with shallow red scratches up and down their arms. They were hard to miss. I always shook my head at them, but at some point, I started to envy them. And at some point, I became one of them.

For me, it started off small. It always does. I grew my nails out and dragged them along the soft skin of my arm, over and over and over and over and over and over again, until I had a dozen raised red marks to show for it. I slammed my head into the hard wood of my bedroom door, over and over and over and over and over and over again, until I couldn't think straight. I bit my tongue until I could taste blood. I kicked myself in the shin until it turned purple. I punched the floor until my knuckles turned pink.

Over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.

One night I dragged the blade of a pair of scissors across my forearm, just to see what it felt like to be 'serious' about it - it couldn't feel much different than a razor blade. The scissors' blade was cold and intimidating, but it didn't hurt in the least, and what was the point then?

The next night, I took a disposable razor out from underneath the bathroom sink, holding it in one hand and a hammer in the other. In one quick and clumsy motion, I brought the hammer down and shattered the pink plastic of the handle, leaving the slightly bent silver blades glistening on the tile floor. They were thin and flimsy, but I sort of liked that. I was very flimsy. It seemed fitting.

And so began my downwards spiral into the crippling addiction of self harm.

I don't know what prompted me to sit down and dig those blades out of the razor that night - it was a combination of things. I was desperate, I was lonely, and if this thing worked for so many other people, then it should, logically, work for me. And It did, in a way. With every swift movement of my hand came another thin red line, and with every thin red line came a thrilling rush of stinging, burning, blinding pain. The pain made my head spin in excitement, but it also made me calm. I was killing a dozen birds with one stone, or blade, in this case. With one cut, I punished myself for the pain I'd brought my mother and sister. I shed blood instead of tears, and something about that made me feel stronger.

My habit worsened steadily throughout the end of middle school, and through the beginning of high school. The Alabama heat seemed especially unforgiving then. It forced me to wear sweaters, jackets, and sweatshirts. You really take the ability to wear a T-shirt for granted, until it's taken away from you - or you take it away yourself. My T-shirts sat in my closet, gathering dust.

Despite all this, somewhere along the line, I did end up making a friend - a blonde haired boy who I'd known since first grade. We got stuck in the same boring classes when high school started, and something clicked that hadn't clicked during the nine years we'd vaguely known each other, I guess. He was everything I wasn't - smart, innocent, pure, level headed. I was glad to have a friend, someone other than Mikasa at least, to accompany me during lunch and on my walks home from school.

Mikasa turned eighteen in February, only a few months into my first year of high school. The day after her birthday, she threw her belongings into her friend's pickup truck and drove away in it. Watching her leave was a painfully familiar feeling. She held no resentment towards me, or if she did she didn't show it. She gave me her phone number and told me to call if I ever needed anything. I told her I would. I never did.

I spent freshman year going to school and hanging out with Armin on the weekends. Dad didn't care what I did when I wasn't at school, so I tried to stay away from home as often as possible. I would spend hours walking the streets if it meant I didn't have to endure his unrelenting kicks to my stomach, slaps across my face, his screams, his shouts, his deep cutting insults. His words cut deeper than I could cut myself.

Junior year began, bringing with it a sense of impending doom, so I thought. It also brought with it a new sense of something - something almost hopeful.

 

I'd been through hell and back over the last five or so years, but junior year at Trost High is where my story truly begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies if this chapter seemed slow or boring. giving a backstory chapter was the only way i could think to introduce eren and his issues. i promise it will be more exciting from here on out. comments are always appreciated as usual. thanks for reading, and don't worry - levi will come in soon.


	2. Teenagers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darken your clothes or strike a violent pose- maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me.

On my first day of junior high school, I woke up three minutes before my alarm was set to go off, also known as the worst possible fucking way to wake up. There's the annoying question of sleeping anxiously for the next few minutes, or getting up and getting it over with. I chose the latter.

I begrudgingly got out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom down the hall. I pulled my long sleeved pajama shirt off, trying and failing to avert my eyes from my exposed arms. They held dozens of carefully carved lines, some a bit jagged, but for the most part straight and horizontal from my wrists to my shoulders. It's a unique feeling to be greeted in the morning by physical manifestations of your own mental suffering, as dramatic as that sounds.

My morning shower was cold - I read somewhere that cold water would fade scars, or some shit. I don't know why I tried - I'd always end up giving myself new scars to heal anyway. Either way, the cold water didn't seem to be working, but I stuck with it - if nothing else, it definitely burned less.

After my freezing shower, I shuffled right back into my bedroom to get dressed. I settled for a grey hoodie and black jeans - an outfit I settled on often. It was quick and easy, and a hell of a lot less suspicious than wearing a sweater or something in the middle of September, one of the hottest months of the year for Alabama. The hot flashes of September were, however, a sign that summer was coming to a grand finale and colder weather was sure to come. That was a comforting thought. I'd always prefered cold weather.

I glanced at the time on my phone. Running late, as usual. I dialed Armin on the off-chance that he might be running late as well - a long shot, but still a glimpse of hope. He picked up. Thank God.

"Hello?"

"Hey," I mumbled into the phone, barely above a whisper. "Are you, uh, running late?"

"Actually, yes, a bit. I was just about to leave. Are you?"

"Is that a real question?" Of-fucking-course I was running late.

"Gotcha, be there in five."

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank - "

"My pleasure," Armin interrupted with a giggle. I heard a door close on his end. "Be there in five, bye!"

I grinned in triumph and shoved my phone into my hoodie pocket. I would have been expelled for tardies a long time ago if not for Armin's generous last-minute rides to school. I probably owed him a fortune in gas money, if he'd cared, that is.

He was honking his horn on the street in front of my house exactly five minutes after our phone call. "Punctual as ever," I noted as I nearly fell into the passenger seat.

"I have a reputation to maintain, you know," Armin replied in total seriousness. You wouldn't have guessed he was a reckless driver by looking at him, but he set fire to the road when we were running late. "Nervous for the first day?" He asked as he spun around a corner.

I thought about it for a second. I felt like I should be more nervous than I was, but I really wasn't worrying about school all that much. It was what came before and after school that had me nervous. "Not really," I replied, and that was the truth. "I guess I'm used to the spin after almost eleven years of nervous first days. Are you?"

"Oh, yes! I'm, like, two pages behind on that summer reading assignment, and I was supposed to write an essay - I did write it, of course, but I don't think I met the word count, and - "

"Poor Armin." I rolled my eyes so far back I could see my brain cells dying. "Must be hard being a genius."

"Believe me, it is." He replied. He pulled into the school parking lot and parked with stunning precision that shouldn't have been possible at such high speeds. "Ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be."

We ran the rest of the way to class, sprinting down the halls, book bags flying at our sides. By some amazing stroke of luck, we ended up having first period together - I figured that was a good omen. It didn't take long to find the English classroom, nor did it take long for us to stumble into the room mere moments before the bell rang.

When we were safely seated, Armin held up a hand to high-five. I flinched at it reflexively and immediately regretted it. "Oh," Armin withdrew his hand and gasped, shocked at what he percieved as his own insensitivity. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to - "

"Chill. It's fine."

"No it's not, it's never fine. Forgive me - "

"Oh my God, Armin. Please. You're making it worse. It's not a big deal."

He opened his mouth, probably to apologize even more, but was interrupted by the bell ringing. Literally saved by the bell.

I took the opportunity to glance around the room at the familiar faces. I hadn't seen these people in a couple of months, but everyone seemed to look the same. I wondered if they thought the same about me. I didn't look much different physically - nothing much had changed about my appearance, with the exception of the fresh marks on my arms.

Dad's behavior had gotten much worse over summer break. He took his physical abuse to new heights, relying on his fists to get his points across rather than his mouth. It worked, I can't deny that. Thankfully, he'd been a bit more forgiving for the week before school started. The thought of coming to school for the first day with a black eye or bruised face was horrifying and I was grateful it wasn't a reality. Not that it mattered. The people at school had a way of not noticing obvious signs of blatant abuse. Either that, or they chose to ignore it.

First period ended up being the only class I had with Armin. The rest of my morning classes passed quickly. They were filled with boring introductions, syllabuses, rule pamphlets, the works. No one said anything to me. I wasn't very popular, but I had maintained some sort of weird reputation from my old days of fighting everyone. It had been years since I'd been in a real fight, but it was all people knew me by. It scared most people away, despite the fact that I was too mentally exhausted to provoke anyone, much less punch them in the face.

I saw Armin again in the halls on the way to lunch. He ran up to me, his arms overflowing with neatly organized binders, books, and folders.

"Why'd you bring your books to lunch?" I asked and prayed to God that he wasn't about to abandon me during lunch.

"Um, I have to have a meeting with a professor in the library, actually," Great. Fantastic. "I'll find you if I get done early. I feel like it'll take a while though, you know how old people are."

"Damnit. Whatever," I sighed, more angrily than I'd intended. "Good luck," I added hastily, but he was already hurrying down the hall.

I scanned the cafeteria with tired eyes, trying to find the most sparsely populated table. It was packed. Everyone flocked together in their respective cliques, herding themselves like livestock. It was almost creepy, the way they bunched together and spoke with excited voices. How anyone could have so much energy on the first damn day of school was beyond me. Defeated, I took my seat at a nearly empty table off in the corner of the cafeteria, occupied only by a small group of guys I thought I didn't know. I sat on the end furthest away from them.

As it turned out, I did know them.

One of them was Jean - notorious for bullying anyone and everyone, myself included, for no fucking reason. One of them was one of his buddies whose name I didn't even know, I only knew that I'd broken his nose in eighth grade and he was the type to hold a grudge. The other two were also people I'd tussled with at some point or another. It was the worst possible combination of people I could've sat at a table with, even if I was a good nine seats down from them.

"Hey, Yaeger!" Jean shouted down the table. When I didn't acknowledge him, he actually went through the trouble of walking down and sitting beside me. Fucking fantastic. Can't say he's not dedicated.

"Hey, Eren. Did you go deaf over the summer? Hmm?" He whispered into my ear.

"Fuck off."

"Ooh, feisty as ever, I see!" He said in a sing-song voice as his friends laughed and moved closer to get a better look. As I said earlier, how anyone could have so much energy on the first day of school is absolutely, totally, beyond me.

"What's with the hoodie, Yaeger? It's hot as hell in here. You anemic or some shit?" He taunted. I grimaced at his words and wondered, briefly, if he'd still be saying that if he knew what I'd done to myself. Probably.

I heard one his friends speak up, the one with the crooked nose I'd given him. "Maybe he's one of those sad little emo kids."

Jean jumped at the new opportunity. "Is that it? You cut yourself or something?"

"No," I mumbled. Part of me wanted to yank my sleeves up and shove my disgusting mutilated arms into his face, but I refrained. That would be the worst possible course of action. So I sat there and took the abuse like a fucking coward.

"Come on, Eren. Show us. We won't tell anyone - "

"Oh my God, can you leave him alone already? Your voice is like fucking nails on a chalkboard, honestly." An unfamiliar voice interrupted Jean. It surprised him as much as it surprised me, which was, well, a lot. No one who knew Jean would stand up to him - he'd made such a name for himself, no one dared to back-talk him. This stranger had back-talked him, and he'd done it with no hesitance whatsoever.

One of his friends laughed. "Aww, looks like the new kid has a thing for you, Jean."

"I prefer people with normally proportioned faces and manners, both of which you lack." the stranger retorted without missing a beat, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Thanks though."

I looked up from my hands to get a look at this supposed new kid, and I have to say, I was shocked. He was so small. He couldn't have been taller than five feet, but he was somehow intimidating. He leaned against wall, arms crossed. He was adorned in all black, from head to toe - black undercut, black nose piercing, black jacket over a slightly-less-black shirt, black jeans, topped off with black shoes. The abundance of black contrasted with his pale complexion.

Yeah, I'd definitely never seen this guy before.

"Oh for fuck's sake Levi, let us have our fun." Jean snapped at the guy - Levi, apparently - and rolled his eyes.

"Go have your fun elsewhere then. I'm not moving, and you're wearing my patience thin."

Jean's response surprised me even more than the size of his opponent - he actually fucking left. It was a goddamn miracle. The stars had aligned and my prayers had been answered. He rolled his eyes for one final time, stood up, and walked away, taking his group with him. I was dumbfounded.

My gaze shifted from Jean to the boy who'd scared him off. "Thanks," I croaked. Levi frowned at me, which was slightly off-putting, though It wasn't an unfriendly frown. It seemed more like his resting face.

"Yeah," He said, his voice much softer than it had been a moment ago. "They're annoying as shit."

I nodded and glanced at my phone. There were still ten agonizing minutes of lunch left and I felt like I at least owed a conversation to this guy, despite the fact that he didn't seem like an especially social person. I mean, he'd been staring at the floor the whole time, aside from a few moments in which he glared at Jean. "Are you really new here?" I asked. A stupid question.

"Yeah."

"Jean's probably gonna try to beat you up."

"Let him try, I don't give a flying fuck." Levi managed to laugh without smiling. I didn't even know that was possible. "He's an asshole. I don't go around picking fights, but I wouldn't mind punching him in the face a few times."

I stood up and gathered my belongings. There were five minutes left, but I wasn't about to risk being late to my last class of the day. I doubted my art teacher would care if I was tardy, but better safe than sorry. "I'll be rooting for you then."

He made a face that could be interpreted as a grim smile, I guess, in the right lighting from the right angle. "Thanks, kid. See you around."

For some reason I doubted I would be seeing much of Levi after Jean got done with him, but I wasn't about to say that. "See you," I replied before hurrying out of the cafeteria and down the hall. As I made my way to the art building - it was separated from the main building - I ran the last thirty minutes over in my head. Something about it felt odd, and I wasn't able to place a finger on it at first - then it hit me like a brick. I'd had a positive conversation with a total stranger - under less than fortunate circumstances, of course, but still. A friendly exchange with a stranger. Usually my conversations at school were back and forth insults with Jean, or shallow small talk with acquaintances. My brief exchange with Levi was the most positive interaction I'd had with anyone in months, with the exception of Armin, of course.

It was a nice change. It was something I could get used to. I wasn't going to count on it, no, but I could dream.

I walked into the art classroom - one I'd walked in a thousand times before - to a pleasant surprise. Sat alone in a quiet corner of the room sat none other than Levi. I had no idea how he'd managed to make it to the room faster than I had, considering I'd left before him, but I didn't dwell on that. I wrote it off his him having superhuman speed due to his size, or something, I don't know. He glanced up at me and did a double-take as I walked in. I did the same. We exchanged one of those weird looks that could only mean, "Oh, I didn't expect you here, but here you are, and here I am, and this is kind of weird."

I averted my eyes to avoid any further awkwardness, and took my usual seat across from a guy named Marco. I wouldn't have considered us friends, but we were at least friendly towards each other. He was soft spoken and never bothered me or gave me sideways looks, which is more than can be said for most other people.

After the class got settled in, Mr. Smith stepped to the front of the classroom. "Right, everyone," He began, his voice bold and business-like, as it always was. "I just want to address the fact that we have a new student joining us."

I glanced sideways at Levi from across the room. He seemed less than thrilled that he was being given a grand welcome. Mr. Smith nodded towards him. Levi sighed before taking his place at the front of the room beside the teacher, who continued on, happily. "This is Levi. He moved here all the way from Nebraska, so I expect everyone to give him a warm welcome. It's not often that we get new students at Trost and it's important that we make a good impression, as I'm sure you all know. Anything you want to tell us about yourself, Levi?"

I felt like I was witnessing an alcoholics-anonymous meeting, except more uncomfortable and less consensual.

"Nope." Levi replied instantly as he made his way back to his seat. He might have the typical emo-art-kid look down, physically, but he definitely didn't have the talkative attitude that usually went with it.

Mr. Smith clapped his hands together. "Well then, on to other things. You all will have no assignments for the first couple of weeks. I know the beginning of school is difficult enough without an art assignment on top of it all. I do, however, encourage you to practice in your spare time, should you have any. This class will be a study hall until I assign something."

There were unanimous mumbles of relief at the phrase "no assignments," even if it was just for the first couple of weeks. Mr. Smith had always been understanding of students' circumstances, which was, truly, a blessing. Come to think of it, he didn't give many assignments to begin with.

I passed the fifty minutes of class with my head down, screwing around on my phone hidden under the table. Art class was one of the few parts of my day I actually enjoyed, so it flew by in the blink of an eye, of course. It was my last class of the day, and it was time to go home before I knew it.

I grabbed my things quickly and headed out to begin my walk home. Armin had one period less than me, meaning he left before I did, meaning I couldn't get a ride home with him, meaning I was stuck, walking, alone, all the way back to my miserable house.

When I got home, Dad was still asleep. Again, the universe had mercy on me. I creaked the front door closed until I heard it click shut, as quietly as I could manage. I tiptoed up the stairs to my room and fell into bed to mull over the day's events.

My first day of eleventh grade. A day that I'd anticipated to be one of my worst days ended up being the best day I'd had in months - I hadn't had to deal with Dad at all, not to mention I'd met a new, dare I say, potential friend. God knows I needed one. I had Armin - Armin was amazing and more than I could ever ask for, but he was almost too good. I couldn't talk to him about the things Dad screamed at me most evenings. I couldn't show him the wounds that covered my skin. He might sympathize, but he wouldn't understand. He couldn't understand. He had a virtually perfect life - his future was laid out for him. He had a scholarship, perfect grades, plenty of friends, and a good reputation at school. More than anything, I just wanted someone who would understand.

Some small part of me hoped that, maybe, maybe, maybe Levi was someone who understood. I barely knew him, but there was a chance that he did. I drifted into a pleasant nap, something I couldn't do very often, but something had allowed me to feel positive. It was another thing I couldn't quite lay my finger on, but it was there, and that was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope y'all enjoyed. don't worry, the angst is coming, in case you were wondering. thanks for reading as usual.


	3. Getaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You got me thinking I won't make it to tomorrow.

"Eren."

So much for the nap.

"Goddamnit Eren, I know you can hear me!"

Dad's voice echoed off the white walls of my bedroom. Some childish part of me thought he might give up and leave if I pretended to be asleep, a technique I'd used often. It never worked. I don't know why I tried.

I sat up in my bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I tensed in pain - I'd somehow managed to sleep on my arm, something I usually tried not to do. I might slice my skin to shreds, but it didn't mean I wanted the scars to show it. To prevent worse scarring, I always made an effort not to reopen fresh wounds after they'd begun to scab. "Sorry," I muttered.

"Is there a reason you're taking a fucking nap after school? Don't you have shit to do? Hm?" Dad slurred. It was painfully obvious that he'd been drinking - he didn't try to hide it anymore.

"Um," I stuttered. "I just - "

"You and your bullshit excuses. Look at this place," He motioned to my cluttered room. "Fucking looks like a tornado hit it."

He wasn't wrong, but it wasn't like my room hadn't always been a wreck. This wasn't a new thing. Clothes piled in corners, binders and notebooks from who-knows-how long ago were scattered on the carpet. I spent so little time in my room, I never saw the point in straightening it up. At least it matched the rest of the house.

"Sorry," I repeated. I sounded like a goddamn broken record. "I'll - I'll do something about it."

"Fucking right you will." He slammed my door so hard it swung back open on its hinges. I sat in my unmade bed, frozen in place, every muscle in my body uncomfortably tensed. The sound of his footsteps faded as he lumbered down the stairs and disappeared all together as he slammed the front door. Off to work, finally. My phone read 7:23 PM - I was safe from him, at least until tomorrow.

I stood up and walked to my window that overlooked the street below, just in time to see Dad pull out of the driveway. The temperature had dropped over the course of the day - It was freezing, especially for the middle of September. It had been sprinkling rain all day and the water had frozen in sheets of ice on the streets. It was dreary weather, but it was better than the miserable heat, by far. It was also a sign that this winter would be an especially cold one - a thought that I welcomed. The colder the better. You'd think Alabama would have mild winters, being in the South, but every couple of years we would get a harsh one. This would be a harsh one.

My thoughts strayed back to Dad. His recent meltdown was one of the less-terrible ones, but it had gotten to me. I'd had what was almost a good day, and planned on having an equally decent night. Of course, he'd fucked that up at the soonest possible opportunity. I couldn't put all the blame on him though. I was the one with the messy room - If I'd ever bothered to clean my room he wouldn't have had to scream at me about it in the first place. Fuck.

I felt the familiar sting of tears, which pissed me off even more. I was tired of crying. Sick of it. Anything was preferable to crying.

Anything.

I slammed my fist on the windowsill and thought about the small box that sat under my bed. It was so tempting - it was always tempting. It's not like I had anything to lose if I relapsed. I'd been better about sleeping my emotions away rather than bleeding them out for the past few days, but my will was wearing thin. It really is an addiction. An addiction I didn't have the energy to fight against.

I rolled my hoodie sleeves up as I crouched at the edge of my bed and pulled the box out. I couldn't even remember where I'd gotten the little container - I'd had it for as long as I'd been hurting myself, which was... a while. Four years, in fact. I lifted the lid, revealing the thin silver blades inside. That was always the point where I would tell myself, "You don't have to do this, you could stop now and it'd be like it never happened," but I never did. I always followed through. I'd made a commitment.

I held one of the blades awkwardly between my fingers and pressed it to the soft virgin skin on the inside of my wrist, as close to the blue of my veins, an area I'd never gone before. It was as close as I could get to my veins without actually killing myself. Appealing as that idea may have seemed, it didn't feel right to do it right then. It would take something much worse for me to finally take that final step. I would, some day. But for now I only dragged the blade across my wrist lightly, quickly, and without hesitation. I repeated the motions a half dozen times, making my way a couple inches my arm with each new cut, until I was satisfied with my work.

God, that sounds dramatic. It's not something you can sugar-coat though, so why try?

I tossed the blade back into the box and slid it back into its rightful place under my bed. Hurting myself put me in an odd foggy state of mind - I didn't really think about what I was doing, I just did it. Not to say I didn't think about the consequences - no, I considered the fact that I'd be living with ugly scars for a long time. I just didn't care enough to stop.

In my dazed state, I grabbed a towel from the bathroom to stop the bleeding and protect my sheets from stains. I didn't care if the towel got stained. I did the laundry anyway, and honestly, I didn't think Dad would care if he discovered I'd been cutting gashes into my arms. It would just be another thing to fuel his hatred towards me, if he cared at all.

I laid the towel on my bed and exchanged my hoodie for a short sleeved shirt to sleep in, since I'd be alone all night. It felt both comfortable and uncomfortable to be so exposed, something most people wouldn't think twice about. I felt a bit better after I'd pulled the blankets over me, and even better still after I drifted into a deep sleep.

  
The next morning I was glad to wake up alone, and that's not something you'll hear most people say.

Last night's wounds had bled considerably more than I'd expected and they'd left the sheet under my towel dotted with red. I pulled them off the bed and chucked them in the corner of my room, on top of yet another pile of laundry I'd been ignoring.

I took my usual cold shower, praying today would be easier than last night. I remembered Dad had mentioned something about traveling a state over for a meeting, which meant I had nearly two entire days to myself. It also meant I would be left alone with my thoughts with no shallow arguments to distract me from myself. That was something I wasn't looking forward to.

I stepped out of the shower and dried off, wincing at the pain in my arms. I'd gone deeper than I meant to - a mistake I didn't make often. Then again, it wasn't really a 'mistake.' It felt better to go deeper.

A quick look out my bedroom window confirmed my theory that it would be cold out. The sky was a light blueish grey, and frost covered the roofs of neighboring houses. I decided on a cable-knit cream colored sweater for the day, glad to have the excuse to wear long sleeves. It was barely the end of September. It was as if we'd skipped autumn completely and gone straight to winter, but I didn't mind. Any excuse to wear sleeves was good enough for me.

I texted Armin. No way I was about to walk to school in this weather.

Eren: Can I get a ride? Cold out

Armin: yep be there in 5

And he did, of course, arrive in precisely five minutes. I hurried to the warmth of the car. It really was freezing out, it couldn't have been more than twenty degrees.

"Wow, it's fucking zero degrees out there," I noted as I closed the car door.

Armin nodded. We weren't running late, thankfully, so he had no need to drive on the iced roads like an escaped criminal.

"Weird how quickly it got cold," He commented.

"Yeah."

I felt the car slide to the side as we turned a corner. "Makes me want to visit the creek. You remember when we used to do that?"

"Do what?"

"Cypress Creek, remember? It iced over completely a couple years ago and we - "

"Oh! Oh, wow, yeah," I exclaimed as the memories returned to me. Not long after I met Armin, we started spending our days in the woods at the edge of town. We ended up discovering a creek in the woods that had been renovated into a kind of obscure park. Cypress Creek.

"That place was beautiful in winter."

"It really was."

"You think it's still there?" Armin asked as he parked in his usual parking place. "I mean, it's not private property, is it?"

"Dunno," I replied as we walked to class. "Probably not. Maybe we should go back."

"Oh, I don't think I could make the time." Armin fretted. "I'm so busy anymore, you know."

"Mmm." I hummed, making a mental note to revisit the creek sometime. It was always so silent. It made you feel like you were a thousand miles away from civilization, but really you were just around the corner. I could use a place like that.

We took our respective seats in class. I crossed my arms, then uncrossed them, then sat them in my lap, trying to find a position that didn't make me distort my face in agonizing pain. You'd think after four years I'd have figured out the secret to sitting in class without reopening wounds, but there was no secret. It was just something you have to fucking deal with.

  
As they had on the first day, my classes passed with little to no incident until I was in the hall on the way to lunch, alone again. I kept a semi-hopeful eye out for Levi - not that I expected to sit with him, or anything. I don't know what I expected, but I did find myself scanning the crowds for him.

My search was interrupted by someone slamming into my back. By some miracle, I maintained my balance and didn't fall on my face, but it pissed me off regardless. I spun on my heel to face the stranger, and realized it was not a stranger at all. It was none other than Jean fucking Kirschtein. Something told me his slamming-into-me wasn't entirely accidental.

I met his eyes for a half-second and tried to turn around, to continue walking anywhere but there, to make an escape, but he grabbed my wrist in the worst possible place. My breath caught in my throat and I gritted my teeth. "Get the fuck away from me," I growled at him.

"No can do, Yaeger," He spat. "Your new friend might have saved you yesterday, but no one's saving you now. You know what he did? He threatened to beat my ass, Eren. You know how humiliating that is for a guy like me?"

I stared at him and tried to shake my arm free to no avail. He continued, "I'll give you a hint - _very._ It's _very_ humiliating. I'm not fucking scared of you, even if everyone else is."

The hall was nearly empty and not a single person stopped to see what the commotion was. Not a teacher, not a student, not a janitor, nobody. It was enraging. I was too damn tired to fight back. I was always too tired.

I yanked my arm once more, but his grip was stronger than my feeble attempts at escape. I sighed. "Please. Please, please just leave me alone, Jean. _Please._ " I felt pathetic, pleading for him to leave me alone, but it was all I could manage to do.

He seemed almost surprised at my begging, causing his grip to loosen just enough for me to finally pull away. I held my wrist with my other hand and backed away from him. I was so damn tired. Tired of this, tired of him, tired of school, tired of living.

He immediately regained his cruel tone and expression. He opened his mouth to say something, but stumbled aside and crashed into the wall of lockers as something hit the back of his head. I saw a fat textbook land behind him with a thud. Jean grimaced and held his head in his hands before speaking up again, his voice strained, "What the fu - "

"Christ, didn't I tell you to get a life?" The voice that replied was - you guessed it - the distinctive, and now enraged, voice of Levi. He half-walked, half-sprinted down the hall and retrieved what was apparently his textbook. "All you fucking do is pick on quiet kids who you know won't fight back. You're a coward. You don't pick on me because you know I'll fight back, and you're damn right I will."

I was horribly embarrassed, being rescued by this guy again, but more than anything I was grateful. I had no idea how Levi managed to hit him in the head with such accuracy from so far down the hall, but I was glad he did.

"God, Levi, just leave me alone," Jean replied, his hand still covering the back of his head.

"Why the hell should I leave you alone? Because you're asking?" Levi scoffed. He was as up in Jean's face as he could get without standing on his toes. The strangest part was that it seemed to be working - Jean looked like a deer in the headlights. Each word he spoke was punctuated by a firm poke to Jean's chest. "You didn't leave him alone when he asked, why shouldn't I do the same to you?"

Jean turned around in a huff and started down the hall towards the loud cafeteria.

Levi cupped his hands and shouted to him, "That's what I fucking thought!"

I leaned against the wall. I felt utterly stupid and it left me at a loss for words. "Thanks," I mumbled after an agonizing five seconds of silence. "Again."

The fire hadn't left Levi's narrowed eyes yet. "My pleasure. People like him disgusting me. Hitting him in the head with this baby - " His expression softened as he patted his thick textbook, " - was the highlight of my day, honestly."

I gave a weak laugh. He was just as brutal as Jean was, the difference was that Levi picked on people who deserved it. That was something I respected. Jean, on the other hand, attacked innocents.

"Anyhow," Levi continued, filling the silence for me. "You wanna go home?"

"What?" We still had art class before school was really dismissed - we couldn't just walk out like that.

"What's the point of going to art? We don't have anything to do in there anyways."

"It's still skipping class."

He laughed. "You really think Mr. Smith cares?"

"I - Well, maybe not, but - "

"Let's go," He ordered and motioned for me to follow, which I did with no hesitation.

And just like that, we walked out of the doors. I felt out of place walking down the street with someone other than Armin, especially on a whim, but it wasn't an unwelcome feeling. I didn't really know Levi - not really, but It was pleasant. It was different. It would have been admittedly more pleasant if it wasn't twenty degrees out, but it was still something and I took what I could get.

Levi broke the silence as he kicked a pile of fallen leaves. "We're supposed to get snow tomorrow."

I looked at him sideways. Snow in September was far fetched, to say the least. He looked back at me as if he'd been reading my mind. "A lot."

"You think we'll get the day off?" I asked.

"That's what everyone's saying."

A day off, to most people, was an amazing concept, but it only made me nervous. Either Dad would come back home early and I'd be stuck at home with him, or he wouldn't, and I'd be stuck at home with myself. I wasn't sure which was worse. I made a mental note to go down to the creek if it did end up snowing.

Levi suddenly stopped in his tracks and gave another one of his halfway crooked maybe-kinda-sorta smiles. I had to admit, it was growing on me. "Shit. I have no fucking clue where we are, so I hope you do. Where are we going, anyway?"

"I - damn, I don't know. I should go home I guess. My place is just a block over. You don't have to come with - "

"Let's go," Levi stated with no trace of emotion in his cold voice, and with that we continued our silent walk.

Maybe I should have felt awkward walking with this slightly intimidating new kid dressed in all black, but it wasn't awkward in the least. It reminded me of how I felt when I first met Armin - something had just clicked. Something in Levi and I seemed to click in kind of the same way.

We stopped in front of my house. The yard was overgrown with weeds and tall grass, and honestly, it wouldn't have been hard to write it off as abandoned. I wasn't the only one who noticed.

"You live alone?" Levi asked as he kicked an empty beer can that'd been left on the sidewalk.

I impulsively scratched at my fresh wounds under my sweater sleeve. A nervous habit. I thought I saw Levi's eyes dart to my wrist, but that could've been me being paranoid. It almost always was. "No," I replied. "I live with my dad. He's - uh - at work, right now. Thanks for, uh..."

"All that, yeah." Levi finished my sentence. "See you tomorrow?"

I couldn't tell if that was a "see you at school" comment or a "let's hang out as, like, friends" comment, but again, I took what I could get. "Yeah," I replied with a what I imagine was a very tired looking smile. "Yeah. Maybe."

He was hard to read, but I thought Levi seemed almost _satisfied_ with himself in some weird way as he gave a half-hearted wave and continued down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone enjoyed this chapter and i hope i'm pacing this okay. thank you all so much for the lovely comments on previous chapters, i hope this one is just as good. it was a bit difficult to write, for a number of reasons. anyways, thanks for reading!
> 
> my tumblr is erelie.tumblr.com.


	4. You Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Cause if you don't, then this book is all lies.

Blinding white light pouring through my bedroom window woke me before my alarm clock did. My room was quiet, the sort of soft silence that could only come with settled snow. It made the thought of falling back into sleep for a few more hours extremely tempting, but Dad would flip his shit if he got a call from the school informing him of my absence - if there even was school.

I fumbled for my phone buried in the covers. Sure enough, a notification from the school flashed on the screen.

_Class canceled today [Wednesday 9-23] due to snowfall and dangerous driving conditions. Class will resume tomorrow [Thursday 9-24] if weather permits._

I swiped my finger to dismiss it, only to reveal another notification, this time from Armin.

_Armin: no school!!!_

_Armin: wish we could hang today....gotta catch up on homework :(_

I almost wished I had homework to catch up on - I didn't have anything else to occupy my time with. I was too awake to go back to sleep at that point. I tapped out a quick reply to lessen his guilt.

_Eren: All good maybe tomorrow_

I crawled out of bed to get a better look outside the window. It was an impressive amount of snow - at least four inches, which was more than North Alabama usually got in a year, much less in September. Our driveway was covered in it. It might melt by the time Dad got home, but I didn't want to take any chances on having to endure another screaming episode, even if it was about something as small as snow in the driveway. He took every opportunity he could to jump down my throat. It wouldn't take too long to shovel it aside anyway, and fuck if I had anything better to do.

I donned my thickest sweater and heaviest coat, paired with a black hat and matching gloves. It might sound extreme for a few inches of snow in Alabama, but I felt much safer in winter clothes. It put more layers between my fucked up arms and the eyes of others. The friction was painful, but that was a small sacrifice to make. I'd take pain over vulnerability any day.

The usual sounds of the our urban neighborhood outside were muffled, the only exception being the crunch of my boots and the scraping of the snow-shovels on the ground. I wasn't the only one who'd decided to shovel snow, but I doubted the neighbors were doing it for the same reasons. Sometimes I felt like everything I did was just an attempt to keep Dad off my back, and it didn't always work. It normally didn't work. He'd been better the past few weeks, I couldn't deny that, but I doubted it was a result of him _trying_ to be better. He'd spent most of his last paycheck getting the car fixed instead of spending it on beer, which probably contributed to his better behavior, but that wouldn't last. It never lasted. He'd no doubt be getting a raise since he was going to a meeting out of town. The increase  in cash meant an increase in drinking, an increase in drinking meant an increase in abuse. It's an inescapable cycle.

As I kicked a pile of white powder off to the side, my phone rang. An unknown number. I didn't get many calls as a rule, and I was inclined to ignore it, but it wasn't like I had anything better to do. It would more than likely just be an accidental "wrong number" call. It usually was. No one went out of their way to talk me, besides Armin, and he was busy doing Armin shit.

"Hello?" I answered in a not-very-convincing cheerful tone.

"What're you doing today?"

The deep emotionless voice on the other end sounded vaguely familiar, but the abrupt question was unnerving. "Uh," I mumbled into the phone. "Who is this?"

"Oh. Shit. Sorry, it's Levi - "

"Oh, God, okay - I thought you were - I don't know. How did you get my number?"

"Your blonde friend was kind enough to give it to me."

Of course. Armin, in his everlasting innocence, giving my number to a total stranger. A total stranger to him at least, and still kind of a stranger to me.

I opened my mouth to ask why he would want my number in the first place - the fact that he seemed to want to talk to me at all was on the weird side, really - but the answer hit me before I could ask and I felt like an asshole. I'd somehow forgotten he'd literally just moved into town - from Nebraska, at that. The atmosphere of Florence Alabama had to be a drastic change from that of anywhere in Nebraska. Not to mention he didn't seem to be friendly with a single person at school, besides me. For some reason I didn't think he'd have the easiest time making friends, not that he seemed very interested in doing that in the first place. He was actually impressively charismatic, I'd noticed, but he was also impressively sarcastic, and a bit cynical. Not something many people went looking for in friends, but I didn't mind - it was something we had in common.

"You still haven't answered my question." Levi interrupted my thoughts.

"Sorry. I'm, uh, shoveling snow right now, so..."

"Goddamn, Eren. I'm asking if you want to hang out or something today." His words were harsh but his tone was amused.

Just a couple days ago my heart leaped at the thought of having a potential new friend, someone to maybe confide in, to find comfort in. But now that it was happening - or starting to happen - it felt wrong. I wanted to tell him _"No, you don't understand, I'm fucked up. I'm a mess. I'm not friend material. Find someone else. You don't know what you're getting yourself into, stop while you're ahead, stop before you get hurt,"_ but I couldn't bring myself to be so blunt. Weren't those the reasons I wanted someone to confide in in the first place?

I couldn't bring myself to turn him down for something so simple as hanging out on a snow day, either. I didn't have anything better to do, and something told me he was in the same situation. I mean, why else would he call _me_ , of all people? That was a sign of desperation if there ever was one.

This was turning into the longest phone call in history, thanks to my constant getting lost in thought. "Sorry," I said again, and scolded myself for apologizing again. It was an annoying habit, both for myself and for everyone else, but I couldn't help it. "I was going to go to the park today, actually..." I said, remembering my plans to revisit the creek, which suddenly seemed very boring. "Holy shit," I laughed. "That sounds lame. Sorry."

"Nah, it's okay, It'd be cool in the snow." Levi replied. "Which one? There's a fuck-ton of parks here."

He was right. I could name ten parks off the top of my head. "Cypress. It's near, uh..." I scanned my mind for a popular place to serve as a landmark, but he probably wouldn't know what I was talking about, being new. That was hard for me to comprehend. I put the shovel away back into the shed and leaned against the rotting wooden wall. "It's sorta in the middle of nowhere, but it's not too far away." Part of me wondered why the conversation was still happening at all - I was stumbling over my words and nothing was going in any sort of direction. There was also the fact that I was boring enough to suggest a literal walk in the park for fun. Jesus, Eren.

"Can I pick you up?" Levi asked, his voice muffled by some rustling noises on the other end.

I wanted to say no, I wanted to say _"Please think about what you're doing, this isn't going to end well for you, I go home every night and dig razor blades into my skin, I have scars that my father gave me, I have scars I gave myself, please find someone else,"_ but I didn't say that. I couldn't.

Instead, I said, "Yeah, yeah. I'll be ready in a minute."

He said, "Okay, cool, be there in ten or so." and hung up. Fuck.

In ten or so minutes, Levi was, as promised, pulling up in front of my house. He was in a beaten up black car that may have looked suspicious if I thought it had been anyone else. My stomach was turning with the usual anxiety that comes with leaving the house, combined with the anxiety that comes with not wanting to screw anything up, not wanting to reveal the unfortunate circumstances in which I lived, not wanting the cuff of my jacket sleeve to slip up, not wanting to say something stupid. Though, buried under that anxiety was a small inkling of something else. It wasn't every day that I got to hang out with someone, and I'll admit, the fact that this someone was the edgy mysterious new kid from school that even Jean was scared of made it a little bit more exciting.

As I walked down the sidewalk, Levi leaned over and unlocked the dented car door from the inside. "I apologize for the shittiness of this vehicle," he said in a melodramatic way as I took my seat in the passenger side. "Better than walking in this weather though."

I nodded in agreement. As usual, he was dressed in the darkest colors clothes came in. The matching black interior of the car smelled like cigarette smoke, but it wasn't unpleasant.

"So, I assume you know how to get to this place," Levi said as the engine stuttered to a start. "Because I sure as hell don't."

"It was my lame suggestion, wasn't it?" I replied. I didn't mean to be such a complete downer, but crippling depression and worse habits will do that to a person. I was no exception.

The majority of the ride was quiet, other than the questionable noises of the car, the soft rock station on the radio blinking in and out of static, and my voice as I gave directions to the creek. We both seemed content with some silence so it wasn't awkward at all, which was a relief. I was still regretting the entire situation. I _could've_ said no, I _could've_ turned him down and gone by myself - I'd planned on it to begin with - but he almost insisted on coming. Not to mention this guy basically saved my ass from Jean. I'd probably be sporting a black eye or worse if not for Levi - indulging him during a day off from school was the least I could do.

Spending the day with someone I'd met only a few days ago was something I would normally never even consider. Seeing someone I _hadn’t_ known for years and hanging out outside of school felt foreign, but I didn't get the usual social anxiety with Levi. Something about the way he talked - the way he did everything - was so much less abrasive, so much less intrusive than most of the people I talked to on a daily basis. It was refreshing. He'd found a balance between cynical asshole and considerate sweetheart, something not many people succeeded in.

 

Nostalgia hit me like a brick to the face as Levi put the car in park and we stepped into the cold. The sky had turned mostly gray, but sunlight peeked through some clouds and made the icicles hanging from the trees' leafless branches sparkle. Everything was how it was when I last visited a year ago, if not a bit more beautiful. It was how it should be. There was no one else in sight, all was silent besides the quiet current of the creek itself. Even the cracking asphalt of the parking lot, dusted with powdery snow, seemed perfect.

"I don't know what my expectations were, but this definitely exceeds them." Levi said with raised eyebrows as he gazed at the scenery. I still felt lame for dragging him to a park on what was sure to be our only snow day all year.

"I'm sure there's prettier places in Nebraska."

"Nah," He scoffed as we started down one of the trails that would lead us into one of the more forested areas. "Not in the big cities. Just office buildings and piss puddles in the streets."

"You were in a big city?" I watched my breath appear and disappear as I spoke. It was calming, just like everything else - the snow, the white, the bare trees, our soft footsteps, the overwhelming nostalgia.

"Omaha, baby. Biggest city you'll find in that hell hole of a state."

"It must be pretty shitty for you to decide to move to bumfuck nowhere Alabama," I said, kicking a clump of snow aside. That wasn't entirely true - Florence is one of the more notable cities in the state, but just being in Alabama automatically qualified it as being a bumfuck-nowhere-place.

Levi laughed - and by laughed, I mean he exhaled through his nose in an amused kind of way. "I don't know. It's nice here. People are still shitty but there's less of them. There's still office buildings and piss puddles in the streets, but there's less of them. Less bad shit to deal with."

I nodded and glanced sideways at him. "Is that why you moved here?"

It was an innocent question, I thought, but it seemed to strike a chord. He frowned and furrowed his brow, and I was afraid I might've crossed some line, but his expression softened as quickly as it had hardened. "I guess," He replied with a barely audible sigh. "I guess so, yeah."

"Sorry," I apologized for probably the hundredth time that day.

Levi cast me the same sideways glance I'd given him a few minutes earlier. "You apologize a lot. You don't have to, you don’t owe everyone an apology.”

I looked away and suppressed the urge to literally apologize for apologizing. He wasn't rude about it in the slightest - he sounded almost sympathetic, actually - but I couldn't help but overthink it and mentally beat myself up over my stupid habit.

"Not everyone’s out to get you.” He added, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel like it.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, interrupting what might've been the beginning of a good moment. The word “Dad” flashed across the screen, and my heart dropped, way past my stomach, landing with a thud at my feet. Speak of the devil. “Sorry, gotta take this,” I mumbled halfway to myself and halfway to Levi as I put the phone to my ear.

“Hi Dad.”

“Goddamnit, Eren!” He screamed. Lovely. I braced myself for whatever was coming, and could only hope Levi didn’t hear the shouting over the sound of our footsteps.

“First of all, you’ve been ignoring my calls all damn day.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have a single missed call from anyone - not that I was aware of _._ “Second. I’ve been thinking…” He continued, his words slurred as they so often were, though his thoughts were more coherent than usual. Guess you can only get so drunk on the job. “Thinking about why you don’t have a fucking job. I’m here two states over staying in a shitty motel, for what? What the fuck is it for, Eren?”

The real answer was _“for beer, for cigarettes, for overdue rent,”_ but that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“For money, for you to keep living under my roof, that’s what the fuck it’s for. And why - ”

“Did you seriously call me just to berate me?” I asked, and regretted it immediately. Normally my self control when talking to him was admirable, but nobody’s perfect.

“Give me one fucking reason not to.” He hissed.

For a second, I tried to actually think of a retort, but my mind was hopelessly blank. Instead, I hung up without saying goodbye. His words repeated in my head - he sounded so lucid this time, so awake, so sober. It was easy to write off his insults as spur-of-the-moment when he was drunk, but this was different. He really meant it. He really meant it, and he was right.

“Was that your dad?” Levi’s voice brought me back halfway into reality. At some point during the phone call, we’d emerged from the forested trail and were standing on the edge of the creek. If I wasn’t so distraught, it would’ve been an amazing sight. The snow covered branches of trees formed a sort of tunnel around the creek, like something out of a fairytale.

“Eren?”

I stared at my phone in my hand. I’d fucked up. I talked back to him, and to top it off, I’d hung up on him. It didn’t get much worse than that. I’d committed the worst possible crime, in his head and in mine. I’d probably be facing a good few nights of insults, and that was putting it lightly. I’d be lucky to go to school the next day unscathed. Whether the pain would be caused by my father’s hand or my own was debatable. Probably both. It was usually both.

Levi touched my shoulder - his touch was gentle enough to mistake for snow, but I still flinched. He brought his hand back and an indescribable expression replaced his permanent glare for a second - an expression I could only describe as a mixture of concern, sympathy, and something else. He was fucking impossible to read and it freaked me out. Everyone else, it seemed, wore their heart on their sleeve. Levi was a walking contradiction - he _looked_ like he should be an asshole, should be a narcissist, should’ve probably punched me in the face when we met, should be coldhearted, but he wasn’t. I couldn’t for the life of me pigeon-hole him into any category based off his personality and appearance. He camouflaged with the emo art kids at school, yeah, but what did that really count for?

“I think I’m going to collapse if we don’t find a place to sit,” He changed the topic with a sigh - though the topic of my phonecall hadn’t explicitly come up, I was grateful. “This place is supposed to be a park, right? Where the hell are all the benches?”

I forced a nervous laugh and swallowed the lump in my throat. I’d rather die than cry, but then again, that wasn’t saying much.

A thought that made my heart skip a beat crossed my mind and I wanted to hug Levi for jolting my memory, though I knew he didn’t mean to. “I know somewhere,” I mentioned, more excitedly than I’d intended. “It’s back in the direction we came from.”

“Lead the way,” Levi replied with a wave of his hand and yet another crooked halfway smile - this time with a smug undertone.

And so I did lead the way, back through the snowy trail lined with trees, until I spotted a more faint, almost hidden trail - probably a deer trail - going down a steep hill. It weaved through a thick bunch of trees, though now that it was winter and they’d shed their leaves, the creek was visible if you strained your eyes. If you strained your ears you could even hear the splashing of the waves.

“We have to go through there?” Levi asked.

“Yeah. Trust me though,” I replied, already finding my footing down the hill. “It’ll be cool.”

“Better be.”

At the bottom of the hill was a dangerously deep ditch that was difficult to see, especially in the snow, and at the bottom of the ditch ran the creek. That wasn’t what I’d been looking for though. What I was looking for sat right in front of me, above the ditch, above the creek.

It was a simple looking suspension bridge, covered in rust and ivy and scattered tree limbs. It was covered in snow that day, making it appear even more serene than usual. I’d only ever been to the bridge alone - I guess I’d never felt inclined to tell Armin about it, and I didn’t think he’d be as impressed as I was. It was like my secret. I’d just let Levi in on it, but I didn’t mind.

He stumbled out of the trees behind me, snow and dead leaves tangled in his hair, mumbling an array of swears under his breath until he settled his gaze on the abandoned bridge.

“Holy shit, Eren. I didn’t know places like this existed.” He spoke with more emotion than I’d ever heard him speak with before, and I have to say I did feel proud of myself. “This is like… Bridge to Terabithia shit, here. It looks like a painting.”

He was right. It looked like a surrealist painting from the eighteenth century - that was probably how old the bridge was, actually. It sure as hell looked it. If I had a dollar for every time I’d sat on that bridge, legs dangling off the edge, crying silent tears and watching them fall into the creek below, then I’d have enough money to build an entirely new bridge.

We exchanged a glance and walked halfway across the bridge, clearing the snow from a spot near the edge, and sitting down side by side. I crossed my arms over the railing as a sort of makeshift pillow and rested my head on it, glad to have a peaceful moment, however fleeting it might’ve been.

I felt Levi’s eyes burning holes into the back of my head until he finally broke the silence. I knew it was coming. “Would it be insensitive of me to ask about your dad?”

I laughed - a light laugh, barely more than an exaggerated exhalation - at his straightforwardness. “Yeah,” I replied. “I don’t really care though. What about him?”

He laughed a similar laugh, I assume at my straightforwardness. “Is he bad to you?”

“Vague question.”

“You know what I mean.”

I don’t know how he knew that I knew what he meant, but I did. I did know.

“Yes. I mean... No. I don’t know. He’s just doing his job as a parent. It’s my fault he’s like that.” I sighed. It wasn’t fair to say I barely knew Levi now - we’d been out for probably at least an hour or two, and it should’ve felt wrong to be so open with him about things I wasn’t even open about with Armin, but it didn’t feel wrong at all. It felt so right. There was something about the way he asked about it, something about his tone - there was a word for it but I couldn’t name it.

“Shit, I’d yell at me too,” I added to lighten the mood.

“Would you yell at your kid like that though?”

“It’s not like that. I don’t care that much, really,” I lied through my teeth. “It’s just words.” I lifted my head to meet Levi’s eyes - maybe it was the lighting, or the snow, or the cold, or the fact that I’d never looked at him directly to the face before, but his eyes were so light. They were almost white, but they were almost blue, too. They were the same color as my dad’s eyes, coincidentally, but they held none of the anger his did. “Just words, you know,” I repeated to snap myself out of the trance.

“Words fucking hurt, dude. Even I’ll admit that. They hurt.”

“Goddamnit,” I muttered. I wanted to be angry at his honesty. He was so secretive, so withdrawn, but he was so damn honest. It forced me to be honest in return. “I know.”

“Would it be insensitive for me to ask more?”

“We’ve already broken the ice, haven’t we?”

He nodded and looked away from me to stare at the water running below us. “Is it always just words?”

He asked it in a way that implied I knew what he meant, again, and I did. Instinct kicked in and told me to lie about it - I was stuck in the middle of not knowing this person at all, and feeling like we’d been friends for years. He could tell everyone. He could tell the entire school that sad emo little Eren goes home and gets beaten by his dad every night, if he wanted to, and it’d be true and people would believe him. For some reason though, against my better judgement, I settled for honesty.

“No, It’s not always just words.” I choked out, scanning his face for any sign of surprise, of shock, of disgust, but if he felt any of those then he didn’t show it. Hard to read. Impossible to read.

“Sorry. I don’t even know why I asked. That’s fucked up.”

“I’m supposed to be the one who says sorry too much.”

“Shut up and accept my apology.”

“It’s okay. I really don’t care, everyone’s got daddy issues.”

At that, Levi gave a full-fledged laugh so warm that I think it melted all the snow in the forest, and suddenly I didn’t regret indirectly telling him that my dad hurts me, and I didn’t regret taking him up on his offer to spend the morning alone in a snowy forest on a snowy bridge, and I didn’t regret waking up that morning quite so much. It was as if we just skipped the small-talk phase of friendship and skipped straight to the heart of it all.

I checked the time on my phone, taken aback at the fact it was nearly noon. “I should probably go home.”

“I’m going to come to this bridge every day for the rest of my fucking life,” Levi replied as we got up to leave.

“You act like you’ve never seen a bridge before.”

“I’m not even bullshitting you right now, I did not know bridges like that - places like this, existed,” He motioned to the winter wonderland around us. “All I know is the jagged architecture of the big cities. This kind of untamed wildlife is so foreign, It’s like I stepped into Narnia.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his childlike wonder. I always took it for granted, I guess. The thought that some people aren’t lucky enough to walk through an actual forest whenever they please never crossed my mind. “We should come here again sometime. Together.”

“Yeah. Tomorrow?”

I winced as I remembered the inevitable punishment I would face when I got home, not knowing if it would be severe enough for me to miss school the next day. “Maybe.”

I was eternally thankful Levi didn’t question my hesitance and vague answer.  


He drove me home, and the ride home was a thousand times less quiet than the ride there had been. We talked about the odd buildings Florence was home to as we drove by them, we talked about the shit songs on the radio, we talked about the tattoo parlour Levi worked part-time at, we talked about how much Jean’s face resembled a horse, we just talked. We talked and talked and talked and talked and it felt fucking incredible, to just talk to someone like that.

 

I tried to ignore the burning pain on the undersides of my arms, and it worked a little. Just a little. The thought that if Levi and I continued being friends - maybe even closer friends - I might accidentally slip up and reveal my self destructive habits was terrifying. I wanted to believe that he wouldn’t be disgusted - after all, he hadn’t been disgusted when I halfway admitted to being abused by my dad - but how could I expect him not to be disgusted when I disgusted myself?

 

I gave Levi a thin-lipped smile as I stepped out of the car, which he returned, in that weird crooked Levi kind of way.

“See you tomorrow.” Levi said over the gurgling growl of the car engine. He said it as both a statement and as a cautious question.

“I hope so.” I replied without thinking. I meant it to mean both _“I hope my dad doesn’t literally kill me tonight,”_ and _“You’re really cool and actually I’d like to see you again, as friends, at school, or something,”_ but it came out sounding more awkward than I’d intended. If it weirded him out then, again, he didn’t show any signs of it.

Seemingly satisfied with my answer, he gave the same halfhearted wave he’d given me the day before - was it really only yesterday? - and drove off in his shoddy car. Maybe shit wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe having someone who knew, at least about the abuse, would make it easier. More bearable. Maybe _._

  
Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took... so long to write. wordpad deleted this entire chapter so i rewrote it and moved all my notes on this fic to google docs. i doubt any future chapters will take so long, but don't hold me to that, lmao. i hope y'all enjoy it nonetheless. this is where things pick up. stay tuned.
> 
> my tumblr is erelie.tumblr.com.


	5. I Know You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know you want to, I just don't believe that you can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for parental abuse in the beginning, and mentions of eating disorders. enjoy, friends.

My evening was spent alone in my disaster of a room, trying not to think about whatever it was I would be facing when Dad got home. I tried instead to think about the half decent day I’d spent with Levi, or about school, about anything else. It didn’t work. I hated my dad but I hated my own mind twice as much - it wouldn’t be so bad if I could force myself to stop thinking about it, stop worrying about it, stop anticipating it, but I couldn’t. I tried to be hopeful - maybe he’d forgotten about our phone call, maybe he’d have to stay out of town another night, maybe he’d be too tired to do anything when he got home, but I doubted I would get off so easily.

I force fed myself a nutritious dinner of cereal as I waited. Eating was such a chore - the thought that I might’ve developed an eating disorder crossed my mind often, though it was never severe enough to care much about. I ate pretty much enough, and never really starved myself - not on purpose, anyway - and I never vomited - at least, not with the intention of losing weight. It was always just a passing thought I pushed into the back of my mind. If I didn’t dwell on it then I didn’t think about it and if I didn’t think about it then it would go away, right?

It was a weird thing to think about and it repulsed me, in a way, so I dumped the rest of my bowl into the trash, ironic as it might’ve been. Every negative thought I tried to push away was only replaced by other negative thoughts, as if it was all that existed. I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to see my dad, I didn’t want to return to school, I was tired, so tired, so tired, so tired. My bed looked inviting but I knew I would only be woken up to the sound of screaming and the smell of alcohol if I managed to fall asleep.

The time on my phone read 9 P.M. Any moment now, any second he’d walk through the front door downstairs and slam it behind him. He’d stomp up the stairs and into my room - and then what? My mind could only fill in so many blanks - it was the ones I couldn’t fill in that were terrifying.

I was in a half-asleep daze at my desk when I heard the front door open and close. That sound was more effective than any alarm clock.

There was some shuffling downstairs that would’ve bought me time if I’d been trying to escape through my window or something, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t even if I wanted to - I could only sit frozen in my chair while my mind raced to keep up with my heart. There were so many options, so many blanks I couldn’t fill, so many methods of torture he could choose from - I could escape with only mental pain, but I doubted it would be so easy. A couple slaps to the face wouldn’t be so bad. A belt lashing was more likely, and that would be significantly worse, but it would be quick - or would it? He could drag anything out for as long as he wanted - but no, he was probably too tired. Probably.

The sound of heavy footsteps echoed in the stairwell down the hall, causing my heart to beat even faster. Dozens of repeating thoughts popped into my head.

Don’t fight it, it’ll be over faster if you don’t fight it. Don’t talk back - it’ll be faster. It’ll be over soon. Soon it’ll be tomorrow and you’ll be at school and it’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. He’ll be walking down the hall soon - that takes about eleven steps and that was the tenth thud, were you counting? He’ll be opening your bedroom door soon, the hallway isn’t that long, maybe another ten steps - and that was the eighth one, right? What’s that noise, what’s that clinking noise?

Clink, clink, clink, he’ll be here any second. Any second now. Any second. Any second.

“Eren?” His voice outside my door was quiet but stern, and I would’ve preferred for him to shout. Calm anger was worse than loud anger - it was deceiving.

“Come in,” I replied as politely as I could. The doorknob turned, slowly, so slowly, until he cracked the door open. I tried to focus on the dark circles under his grey eyes instead of the belt dangling from his hand - dark circles meant tired, tired meant he would give up soon. I hoped.

“Anything you want to say to me, son?”

When people say they feel panic rising in their chest, they aren’t exaggerating. That’s what it feels like. “I’m sorry for hanging up on you,” I choked out as if it might make a difference. “I’m sorry for, uh… I’m sorry I was rude.”

He frowned and closed the door behind him, clicking it shut, and took a step towards me. I sunk into my chair and stared at the white wall instead - anywhere but him, anywhere but his eyes, anywhere else.

“You’re not fucking sorry, Eren. I work day and night to provide for you, and you repay me how? By ignoring my calls, hanging up on me, making shit grades, having no job?”

I wanted to vomit every time he said my name. He was right. I wasn’t sorry - I didn’t regret it at all, but I wasn’t about to admit that. He took another sickening step forward and I, in my peripheral vision, saw the black belt sway to the side. The belt wasn’t something he brought out often, but he brought it out often enough for me to be familiar with the sting of it, enough for me to dread it with my entire being.

“I’m sorry, I really am, I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry,” I croaked in some pathetic attempt to change his mind. I wanted to be able to take it like a man - be strong about it, face the pain with no hesitation, no sadness, no tears, but I couldn’t.

“Oh, fuck off. If you were sorry you wouldn’t do it.”

“I really am, I really am sorry, I won’t do it again. I’ll never do it again, I promise. Please. I swear I won’t ever do it again,” The tears welling up in my eyes made everything twice as bad, and twice as blurry. “I won’t ever, please. Please don’t... “ “You don’t understand. You don’t understand what it’s like to be a single parent, Eren. I have to be the bad guy because your fucking mother isn’t here to play that role. I have to do all the disciplining. I have to do everything. You’re just a fucking kid, you don’t understand.”

I wanted to scream at him, I wanted to scream “Please, please, please just get it over with then, please hurry,” but he seemed intent on giving me a speech beforehand. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“I do it because I care about your future, and how in hell are you supposed to be successful if no one’s around to tell you when you’ve fucked up?” He sounded almost caring in his tone, and it made sense, really. He was right, he was my dad, it was his job. He motioned for me to stand up and turn with my back to him, so I did, abandoning my safe haven in my chair. It would be over soon and I could crawl into bed and sleep the bad feelings away, sleep the pain away, soon.

Seventeen is too fucking old to get belted by your dad. It’s humiliating, being one year away from being a legal fucking adult, yet still standing in your own bedroom being whipped by your own father like a disobedient animal.

It felt like fire, and burning, and a thousand bee stings, and the color red, and the color white all at the same time and there wasn’t shit I could do about it - not if I wanted it to be over, and I did. I wanted it to end, so I took it like the coward I knew I was.

I squeezed my eyes shut so tight it hurt and tried to think about anything but the pain. I counted, one, two, three lashes down my back, then one, two, three, all the way back up - and a fourth one to the neck for good measure. That one would leave a lovely violet mark for everyone at school to see.

After that fourth one, he faltered and exhaled like he’d just run a marathon. “You. You’re just like your mother. You don’t even fight back. Is it because you know you’re weak?”

In that moment, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that my physical pain was equal to my mental pain. Everything hurt, everything stung - the irritated cuts on my left forearm, the welts down my back, the throbbing in my head, the hot tears in my eyes, his words, everything. I barely noticed as he left my room and stumbled down the stairs.

I heard his bedroom door shut as I turned my lamp off and crawled into bed. I wanted to stay awake and spend all night sobbing into a pillow and hating myself, hurting myself, but I was so damn tired and it hurt so damn much and everything was so damn awful, the only thing I could think to do was close my tired eyes.

And so, with one final sigh, I fell into a deep, dark, heavy sleep.

 

The color grey seemed to be becoming prominent in my life - grey skies, grey eyes, grey clouds, grey blades, my faithful grey jacket. It was dull. Everything was dull, it was so dull it made my chest ache and my head spin and my hands shake. The next morning was grey.

I decided to walk to school, as it wasn’t too cold, and all the snow had melted. It looked like Alabama again. Armin would’ve been more than happy to give me a ride, but I couldn’t even fathom the idea of carrying on a normal conversation with him, or with anyone else for that matter. The pain in my back - and neck - was sharp and dull at the same time, red on the surface and bruised underneath. A quick look in the mirror before I left confirmed that the spot on my neck was, indeed, very noticeable.

Most people my age were hiding hickeys. I was hiding bruises my father gave me.

I stared at my feet as I walked down the cracked sidewalk and wondered if Levi would say anything about it, or if he would notice it at all. I somehow hoped he would and hoped he wouldn’t at the same time. Part of me didn’t want to worry him, but part of me didn’t think he would be worried - nobody worried over me, except maybe Armin when I failed a test or some stupid shit. Levi barely knew me, yet somehow he creeped his way into my mind. We’d known eachother for, what, four days? Why would he care?

As it turned out, Armin had some tour-the-local-university-and-talk-to-teachers kind of thing, and wasn’t at school. I was relieved, but also disappointed, somehow. It was lonely without him there to talk my ear off about homework and tests and tomorrow’s quiz and whatever else, but I didn’t think I could handle pleasant small talk in my current mental state. My thoughts were random words that kinda sorta went together, but wouldn’t make sense if I said them out loud. My mind kept replaying the last night’s events in my head, over and over and over and over again, and each time I remembered them, the pain became more real.

My static brain made my classes fly by. Most of them were spent staring into space. I thought I caught a few concerned looks from random people whose names I didn’t know, and didn’t care to know, but I could’ve been wrong. Frankly, I didn’t give a fuck if they saw the red purple welt on the back of my neck. It wasn’t like anyone would do anything. No one ever did, because no one ever cared, and that was fine with me. Better for people to not care than for people to care and be worried, or worse, take action.

I halfway snapped out of my zombie trance when I walked into the art classroom. My eyes immediately settled on Levi’s, causing him to narrow them and made an odd face that I couldn’t decipher - I never could figure out what he was thinking and it was kind of terrifying. He didn’t say every thought that came to his mind, and it seemed like he chose his words very carefully, despite his tendency to swear.

He motioned to the empty seat beside him so I took it. I was too tired to bother trying to fake a smile or small talk, but it was okay, because he made me feel like I didn’t need to, somehow. I didn’t feel inclined to put on a show of normalcy for him and it was enlightening. The only downside to this was that it was probably painfully obvious how messed up I was.

I stared at the rose he was sketching. It was mesmerizing - for some reason the idea that he was into art hadn’t crossed my mind, despite us being in, you know, an art class. The petals were sharp and bold, not soft and quiet like most people would expect a rose to be.

“That’s pretty,” I noted, sounding more tired than I’d meant to. The silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable, thanks to the loud voices of the rest of the class, but I felt the need to break it.

“Thanks,” He hummed in reply, his words punctuated by yet another indecipherable face. I waited for him to say something more, to ask something, but he only continued drawing quietly, so I continued watching quietly.

This went on for another few minutes until he sighed and tossed his pencil onto the table. On a normal day, I might’ve flinched at the action of throwing anything - even a pencil - but I was so tired. He turned to look me in the eyes again and suddenly the eye contact made me want to run out of the room and never come back - which was stupid, I know, but I couldn’t help it. It was a primal instinct. He had the sort of face that, from a distance, made it seem like he was cursed with a permanent glare, but his silver eyes held no anger when he looked at me. They didn’t seem to hold anything. I wondered if mine were the same.

“What’s wrong?”

“You. You’re bothering me.” Levi replied with a huff.

I was so taken aback at his harsh reply that I just sat dumbfounded until he spoke up again.

“Sorry,” He said more softly. “I don’t mean… I mean, you’re weird. I mean you’re acting weird right now. Holy shit, what am I even saying?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. It made him look very old. “Can we leave? I need to get out of this school, I feel like I’m going to punch someone in the face if I don’t leave.”

“I’m tired,” was the best reply I could manage. The idea of running around town with Levi was appealing, in theory, but I thought I might die if I tried to even stand up. I suddenly realized I felt weak and clammy in a weird way that made my stomach ache and hands shake. Deep down, I knew it was hunger, but that was a problem that could wait. “Also, I think I’m sick, or something.”

“God, you look like it,” Levi said, and I was knew he was right.

“Thanks.”

“Shit, sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be an insult.” He went back to his rose. “Do you need a ride home?”

The words “ride” and “home” and “sorry” and everything else he was saying didn’t connect in my brain, everything sounded muddled and fuzzy, and the classroom was too loud, and the lights were too bright, and everything was too much. I sat my head down on the table to escape, at least for a moment. Levi said something else but it all melted together, fading into the background noise of everyone else’s voices.

I was nearly asleep when he tapped the table beside my head with his pencil.

“Hey, are you okay?” His voice faltered for a tenth of a second and it made my heart drop, to hear him have a lapse in his constantly confident demeanor, however small it was. My heart dropped even further when I realized it was entirely possible he’d seen my neck. If only I could be as indifferent towards him as I was with most people.

“I’m tired. And I think I’m sick.” I mumbled into the fabric of my jacket.

“That’s the exact thing you said five minutes ago. I’m going to take you home in a minute, class is almost over.”

I should’ve been thankful for the chance to not have to walk home, but the thought of going home at all was vomit-inducing. There was nothing I wanted more than to pass out in my bed and sleep for as long as possible, but that would involve going home, and that involve interacting with my dad, most likely. I usually didn’t try to avoid going home because of him, but I was scared after what had happened last night. It embarrassed me to admit it, even to myself, but I was scared.

“I - actually, I’m not going home after class,” I stuttered.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

Levi began putting his things away so I did the same. Even the simple movements involved in shoving books into my bag were painful - the stretching of my arms felt like tearing paper and even the slightest twitch sent pain shooting through my back. I couldn’t remember the last time I went a day completely devoid of physical pain, whether it was hunger or headache, or open wounds on my arms, or bruises hiding under my shirt - it was always something.

“Okay, then let’s go somewhere,” Levi suggested as he stood up. “I have work tonight but that’s not for a while, and you can come if you want.”

Black spots danced in my eyes when I stood up and I thought I might fall through the floor - I don’t know what that means, but that’s how it felt. Like I might fall and, even after hitting the floor, just keep falling forever into more blackness. “Okay,” was the best reply I could muster.

“Okay,” He parroted. “Also, it’s raining, so we’re going to have to haul ass to the car unless you want hypothermia.”

I groaned in protest but before I knew it, we were running across the parking lot. The fact that I was able to run at all was a surprise, and the fact that I didn’t fall face-first into the asphalt was equally surprising, but I managed, somehow. Soon, I was sat with my head against the car window, watching the raindrops race each other down the glass. I was on the brink of sleep but was jolted awake as the car bumped over one of the many potholes that littered the streets.

“Where are we going?” I asked with a glance towards Levi. His eyes had a far-away look to them and I craved to know what he was thinking about - whether it was about me, or otherwise.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere quiet and lonely.”

He tapped the steering wheel with his fingers before replying. “The creek?”

“In the rain?”

“We’re spontaneous teenagers, we’re supposed do crazy shit.” He shrugged and made a flawless turn. He drove the same way he drew - carefully, precisely, perfectly - as if his life depended on it. “Also, I want to see it without the snow.”

“It’s boring,” I lied. It was beautiful, snow or rain or sunshine, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little embarrassed of loving a park so much.

“Well, I’m the one driving, and we’re going to the creek, because I want to.”

“Whatever you say.”

He gave yet another pleasantly grim smile before mumbling, “Damn right.”

 

The rain had died down to a light drizzle by the time we pulled into the deteriorating parking lot of the park. In the snow, it had looked like a fairytale, but in the rain it just looked dismal. Still beautiful, in a sad way, but dismal. It was fitting.

We didn’t bother flipping the hoods of our jackets up as we stepped outside and started walking down the same trail as yesterday. It felt natural, like it was the way we were supposed to go, where we were supposed to be. I ached with every step and it took every ounce of strength I had left not to grimace in pain. I knew my obvious issues would be brought up sooner or later, and I had a feeling it would be ‘sooner’ rather than ‘later.’

My theory was confirmed when the steady sound of rain and footsteps was interrupted by Levi’s voice.

“Are you really okay?”

He was hesitant, like he didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“Tired,” I replied as if I hadn’t said that word a hundred times already. Somehow we’d wandered to the bridge, that, like everything else, looked forlorn and depressed, as if it might fall at any second into the rushing water below. We took our seats on the edge - the same as yesterday, if not a bit closer this time - and leaned on the rail.

The act of sitting on the edge of a bridge filled me with a disturbing sense of longing, though this bridge was small and the drop wasn’t more than twenty feet. The water was shallow and I couldn’t drown in it if I’d tried. It was only a creek, after all. The same couldn’t be said for the half-mile long bridge downtown that stood over the Tennessee River - countless people had been swept under its current. I guess they made their great escape.

I felt Levi’s eyes on me. Some part of me was paranoid that he could see straight through me into the darkest crevices of my mind, like he was dissecting every morbid thought, every mental scar, every memory - and I was sort of okay with it, really.

“What’re you thinking about?” He asked, blunt as ever.

I sighed. Every question he asked forced me to make the decision to either lie or be brutally honest, and something about his demeanor made me want to be honest, made me want to cut my chest open and let him see my secrets, but I knew I’d regret it. I’d never opened up to anyone - I was waiting for the right time, but it never felt right. Though, sitting there in the cold rain, it felt almost right.

“I don’t know,” I turned to meet his gaze. “I’m so tired - tired of everything. I just want to sleep, you know?”

“I - I know,” Levi replied, sounding distracted. “Is it - is… Wow, your eyes are so bright. I - Sorry - they just, wow.”

I glanced away, equally flustered - I just wasn’t as good at hiding it. “I hate them.”

“You shouldn’t,” He replied, his confidence returning. “They look like the ocean. Don’t fight me on this.”

“What were we even talking about?”

He laughed - a light, soft sort of chuckle. “I’m sorry. I think we were about to have a heartfelt conversation, or something.”

“Shit, you’re right.” I brought my weak hands up to run them through my hair.

“Hey,” Levi reached out and took my freezing hand, causing a horrible lump in my throat and an even worse ache in my chest. My mind screamed in protest that his fingers lingered too close to the edge of my sleeve, too close for comfort, mere inches away from a healing wound, but I didn’t shy away from the touch. “Your hands are shaking.”

“I - yeah, it happens sometimes,” I tripped over my words. “It’s okay, it just happens. It’s cold.”

His eyes held a knowing look, and, once again, I felt like he was looking through me. “Have you eaten today?” He asked, the dreaded question I should’ve known was coming.

I never was a good liar. “No, but it’s okay, really. It’s fine. I’m fine.” I left out the fact that I hadn’t eaten yesterday - save for the few pieces of cereal - or the day before.

“Don’t lie to me,” He ordered, but he was more concerned than upset. The realization that another person was genuinely concerned about me felt foreign, though vaguely familiar - it was something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

“It’s not a big deal,” I repeated. “I eat… I eat enough. It’s okay.”

He released my hand to check the time on his phone. “I have to be at work in thirty minutes. You want to come?”

I nodded and stood up, shaking the accumulated rain from my hair. “Would it be a bother?”

“Not at all.”

 

As it turned out, Levi worked part-time at a tattoo parlour. I guess I’d seen it before - I couldn’t have gone seventeen years in the same town without at least glancing at the place, but it seemed like I was seeing it in an entirely new light now. It sat downtown on a busy corner, its windows adorned with colorful paintings of roses and angel wings and bleeding crimson hearts. Flashing neon signs illuminated the front of the building and reflected off the glass doors. I couldn’t imagine him working anywhere else.

Inside, we were greeted by the faint smell of cigarette smoke and burning incense, along with a record player in a corner, quietly playing a heavy song I’d never heard before. Posters and framed album covers hung on the beige walls. The atmosphere there was such a sharp contrast to the monotonous life outside, it was like walking into another world, as cliche as that sounds. Levi led me past what I assume was the waiting area into a back room marked ‘employees only,’ though it looked more like a college student’s living room than a workroom.

A blonde girl sat on a leather loveseat in the middle of the room on her phone and cast Levi a sideways look as we walked in. She glanced at a watch on her wrist. “Four minutes late,” She smirked, her voice flat and devoid of emotion, save for a tinge of amusement. “You’re lucky we’re not busy tonight.”

Levi rolled his eyes in response. “We’re literally never busy.”

“Right,” She stood up and nodded in my direction. “Who’s that?”

“Friend from school. If there’s not anything that needs doing then we’re just gonna chill in here.”

“Suit yourself. I’ve got paperwork and shit to do,” She slid past us and out the door. “Also, uh, take care of Sam if you don’t mind, he fucking hates me.”

Levi waved her on and clicked the door shut - which, for some reason, made me a nervous wreck. It made the room feel like a cage, an all-too-familiar feeling. I tried to ignore it and sat on the loveseat. “Who’s Sam?” I asked as Levi searched through a cabinet.

“Hold on, you’ll like him.” He opened and closed a few drawers until he found what he was looking for - a black bundle of something. “This - “ He sat the thing on my lap, revealing what was probably the fattest black cat in existence. “ - is Sam.”

The cat seemed content with resuming his interrupted nap on my lap. I didn’t mind at all - In fact, if I had to pinpoint the exact moment I realized I was a cat person, it would be there on that leather loveseat, stroking the most obese animal to ever grace my presence.

“Oh my God,” I said, dazzled. “I love him. I’m in love with this cat.”

Levi took the seat beside me and reached over to smooth Sam’s messy fur. It was a funny thing, to see someone who looked capable of murder tenderly stroking a cat, but he didn’t seem to think much of it. He didn’t seem to think much of anything, most of the time.

“Is there any time you need to be home?” He asked. I glanced at a frosted window, surprised to see it was already dark. The only light outside was the soft glow of white streetlamps and the occasional passing car’s headlights.

“No, I guess not,” I replied with a sigh. My dizzy spell and exhaustion had temporarily melted away during the transition from the creek to the parlour, but they were returning with a vengeance. I rubbed my tired eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Can I ask you something?”

I sighed again. “I don’t - I don’t starve myself, if that’s what you’re thinking.” The phrase ‘starve myself’ was damn near impossible to say, but I meant it. “I’m… I have problems, you know, but I don’t… I don’t do that.”

Levi stared into my eyes as if he was reading a book. I felt vulnerable, and really had no fucking clue why I’d decided to utter the phrase ‘I have problems’ to someone I knew next-to-nothing about, but it was too late to backtrack. It seemed to me like he knew I had problems before I told him. Even before I confided in him about my dad, he carried a knowing demeanor.

I broke the silence before he could. “Why are you nice to me?” I asked, averting my eyes to look at the cat again. “It feels wrong. You should’ve punched me in the face when we met.”

He laughed and I regretted not stealing a glance at his smile, as it was so rare and so fleeting. “I’m not a complete asshole, I’m just selective about who I’m nice to.”

“Then why me?” I knew I probably sounded like an attention whore for asking, but the question was eating away at me, and - hell - it’s not like I had anything to lose.

“Honestly,” He started, his voice low. “I felt bad for you at first. You seemed miserable, and I’m the new kid, and... I guess I flock to miserable people. Birds of a feather, whatever. I didn’t know anyone, and then I saw the chance to tell Jean to fuck off - seriously, how can you pass that up?”

I smiled and nodded in agreement before he continued.

“So I did, and then we had art class together, and - shit - I don’t know,” He turned to meet my eyes again. “You intrigue me. I fucking hate people, in case you haven’t noticed, but you’re weird. I want to know you.”

“I want to know you too.” The words left my mouth before I had the chance to think about it.

Levi beamed at me, smiling as wide as a person can without showing teeth - though I wished he would. “Then let’s keep doing this,” He said softly. “Let’s keep going to the creek after school, and let’s keep coming here, and let’s keep knowing each other.”

I wanted to be happy - I almost was, but something about the situation made my chest ache again. My weak smile digressed into a frown. I was suddenly aware of my headache, my wrists, the bruise on my neck, the pain down my back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I - fuck,” I stuttered. “I’m sorry - I’m a mess. I don’t want to… It sounds cliche, but I don’t want to hurt you by being your friend. I’m messed up.”

He was quiet for a moment before replying, “You won’t. You don’t have to tell me everything right now - or ever, if you don’t want to.”

I nodded in lieu of saying ‘okay’ for what would’ve been the thousandth time. I should’ve insisted, should’ve told him it’s worse than he thinks, ‘run while you still can,’ but I didn’t. I wanted so badly to be able to confide in him, and he’d just given me a reason to - I couldn’t find it in me to turn that down. It was selfish. I was heavy with burdens I’d been carrying my whole life and I longed to lift them, even if just a little, even if someone else had to help me.

“Hey,” Levi leaned in half an inch and whispered, his voice mingling with the pitter-patter of rain on the roof and the muffled music down the hall.

“It takes one to know one, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this took so long to get published, i hope y'all enjoyed this chapter, i poured my soul into it lmao. maybe that's why it took so long. i'm so excited to continue writing this fic and i am humbled with the support i've received thus far. i hope everything is going at a believable pace and doesn't seem forced - i'm always afraid my writing seems forced...
> 
> also, not sure if anyone noticed, but i went back and renamed all the chapters and redid the chapter summaries. nothing big, just a minor edit i thought i'd point out. music is going to be a very central theme in this fic in the future chapters so i thought it'd be fitting to name the chapters after song titles and lyrics (because that's not overdone at all, right?)
> 
> as always, thank you for reading and commenting, i appreciate it endlessly and still can't believe people are actually reading this. wow.
> 
> my tumblr is erelie.tumblr.com.


	6. Barely Legal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stop pretending.

I’d been dreading the moment I finally got home, but flopping into my bed was an amazing feeling after such a long day. A day that had turned out to be decent, sure, but still long as hell. The heavy comforter on my bed almost made the painful bruises and welts on my back melt away.

The fact that Dad was asleep definitely helped soften the blow of coming home.

Home.

It felt wrong to call it that. I had vague memories of feeling “at home” - Mom cooking dinner in the bright yellow light of the kitchen, raking leaves in the front yard, taking naps after school and feeling totally at ease, totally safe, totally content - but those feelings were only memories, and nothing more. My perpetual homesickness was just another burden, constantly tugging at my heart, weighing me down until I fell.

And I would fall, eventually. It was only a matter of time. I’d been fighting it for five years, and it was a miracle I’d made it that long. People aren’t made to endure constant exhaustion, dizziness, beatings, loneliness - and the emptiness - God, the emptiness.

I sighed and shoved my face into a pillow, trying to rid my head of those incessantly dark thoughts that seemed to keep worming their way in. I pulled my phone out and scanned my contacts list, scrolling past Armin’s name, past Mikasa’s name, past Mom’s name and number I never deleted for some goddamn reason - scrolling until my eyes lingered on Levi’s name and number he insisted on putting into my phone back at the tattoo parlour.

“Don’t you already have my number?” I’d asked, remembering the first time he called me.

“Yeah, but friendship is a mutual thing. I have your number, you have my number,” Levi replied in a flat matter-of-fact tone as he punched something into my phone.“It’s kind of how it works.”

At the time, it made me crinkle my eyes and smile in childish delight, but now as I sat in bed I was riddled with guilt. I wanted so badly to dump my secrets onto him, let him know what he was getting himself into, but there was no graceful way to do that. It felt wrong, dishonest, to keep those secrets from someone so unsuspecting - but was he really unsuspecting? Something in the back of my head made me think that maybe he wasn’t all smiles for a reason - like there was something hidden behind his cold secretive eyes, concealed under his mask of sarcasm, but I chalked it up to me grasping at straws. I longed for someone to relate to, someone to make me feel even a little less alone, but the last thing I wanted to do was drag him under with me.

I entertained the thought of tapping ‘call,’ but what would I talk about? What was there to say? “Hi, it’s Eren, I’m an emo piece of shit and also I’m really suicidal and also I’m lonely, please talk to me, but not too much or I’ll feel bad about it?” Not really anyone’s idea of pleasant small talk, I decided, so I shoved my phone back into its spot under my pillow.

After one final sigh, sleep came for me. I was glad to succumb to it.

 

My morning routine passed me by in a blur. I forced a couple pieces of toast down as I walked out the door - I couldn’t go forever without eating, as convenient as that would be, and it was easier to eat when my mind was preoccupied something else - in this case, with not being late for class.

The soft sight of gray skies and dark clouds greeted me outside. Walking in the rain wasn’t unpleasant - in fact, it was a welcome feeling to let the freezing water soak through my hair and fall down my face. It made me feel like a sad character in my own movie, and movies always have happy endings, don’t they?

That thought might’ve lifted my spirits, had my coat sleeve not brushed against one of the deeper wounds on the underside of my wrist. That fleeting pain was a stark reminder that I was far from my happy ending - no, I was still broken and shattered into a hundred pieces, battered and bruised and tired with the scars to prove it, and that was how it would always be. It might’ve been nice to be hopeful, at least a tiny bit, but every time I started to see a silver lining it was as if my mind hit an invisible wall and plummeted back into that familiar dark hole.

“Eren!” Armin’s voice cut through the chatter of the morning crowd in the hallway as he caught up to me and gave me a playful punch on the shoulder - it was nothing, it should’ve been nothing, I should’ve laughed and shoved him in return, but I only looked away and made every effort not to flinch instinctively.

“Eren,” He repeated cheerfully, blissfully ignorant as always. “I haven’t seen you in, like, wow, five years - “

“One day?”

“Oh, whatever. How have you been getting along without me? Keeping your grades up? Getting to school on time? You haven’t died of loneliness?”

I hesitated and wanted to say I felt like I was dying of loneliness with every passing second, but that would only incite more concern on his part, and that was something I could do without. I shook my head. “It’s been okay. Been really tired. Think I’m getting sick or something.”

Armin hummed in sympathy. “Flu season’s just around the corner.”

“It’s always flu season here.”

“You’ve got a point.”

First period flew by like the rest of the morning seemed to have. I was glad. It felt like the week was going by at a snail’s pace, dragging its feet in a static haze of headaches and rain and white noise. I wondered if everyone felt that way - they sure didn’t act like it, but deep down I knew it wasn’t ‘normal’ to experience life through dead eyes like I was. I was never mentally present, always lost in my own twisted thoughts, always somewhere else.

The first half of my day was enveloped in that brain-fog, only to be interrupted on my way to lunch by an announcement blaring through the intercom.

“Students,” A woman’s voice echoed through the hall, her voice projected through speakers in the ceiling. “We’ve been informed of a tornado warning that affects the North Alabama counties. Due to this, we ask that all students organize rides home and take shelter. Students who take the bus home need to meet in the front of the building for normal drop-off. Thank you - “ Click.

I figured my day would be ruined by Jean pissing me off, not a fucking tornado, but it wouldn’t be a true southern September if we didn’t have at least one of those to deal with. I slammed my locker door shut and started down the hall, no real destination in mind, zoning out the crowd’s hushed whispers of excitement. I didn’t give two shits about a tornado warning - they were usually hollow threats and pretty much Alabama’s version of a severe thunderstorm watch. The tornadoes themselves always seemed to elude Florence. If they hit at all they would hit a town over, missing us by a few miles. More than anything, I was just pissed that my day was interrupted and I had to find some place to go. Home didn’t feel like an option and, honestly, I wouldn’t be much safer there than I would be at school. I was more worried about the wrath of my father than that of what was probably a nonexistent tornado.

I resolved to walk around town instead, which was a fucking stupid thing to want to do, really. It wasn’t like I would be opposed to death by tornado - it would save me the hassle of doing it myself, at least.

I pushed my way through the dense crowd of people outside, only to pause when Levi’s now-familiar voice shouted my name. I spun on my heel to face him and the sight that met me was unexpected, to say the least. His usual perfectly straight hair was windblown and his stoic expression was laced with the slightest hint of panic. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, but my puzzled expression must’ve said enough.

“Eren, hi, I need you to drive me to the parlour,” He ran a hand through his hair. “Everyone cancelled their fucking shifts because of this - “ He waved a hand to the darkening sky - “I have to put Sam in the basement, he’s locked in the - “

“Sam the - the cat?” I held back a smirk.

“Yes, the cat. If you think I’m going to be responsible for - “

“Okay, Jesus - and you need me to do what?”

“Drive me there,” He ordered and mumbled a choked sounding ‘please’ as an afterthought.

“I - I don’t have a car - You can’t drive yourself?”

“Fuck no, I’m not driving in this weather. My car’s here.”

I cast him another confused look - the weather wasn’t that bad, and just yesterday he was driving in the same light drizzle of rain - but I didn’t question it. He’d done me the courtesy of not questioning my odd fears and mannerisms. It was the least I could do to treat him the same.

“Okay then, let’s go.” I shrugged. It wasn’t like he was inconveniencing me, only interrupting my subconscious death wish to go for a pleasant stroll in severe weather.

“Thanks,” Levi sighed again, this time in relief. Whether the relief was at the fact that I was doing him a favor, or at the fact that I didn’t ask why he can’t drive in the weather, I wasn’t sure.

 

The parlour wasn’t quite so welcoming without anyone there. The darkness of the streets outside leaked in through the windows and cast a lonely bluish gray light over everything - there was no soft rock music playing, no air conditioner running, no incense burning, no ambient noise, only the hollow sound of our footsteps on the hardwood floor. The only thing that remained from my visit the previous day was the faint smell of cigarette smoke. It felt more like walking into a stranger’s home than walking into a business building - then again, that’s what it had felt like the first time I went there.

I started down the hall to follow Levi towards the workroom, but paused near a shelf holding dozens of rows of records, all stacked against each other. Some records’ covers were bent at the corners, torn and frayed from love, while others seemed brand new. A few records sat out of their covers, collecting dust in their ridges. It was the covers themselves that piqued my interest, though - combinations of stripes and patterns and blurry photographs and colors that didn’t quite go together clashed with images of eyeballs and sunsets and oceans, butterflies and birds, portraits of people - none of which I recognized. ‘Curiosity’ wasn’t something I remembered feeling in what seemed like a very long time, but I was almost curious to hear the music these covers enveloped.

Levi stepped beside me and followed my gaze to one album whose art caught my eye - a gold and green embroidered collage of a scene, a city sidewalk lined with buildings and trees, accented by a crimson sun in the corner. It wasn’t particularly bright or unique by most people's standards, but something about the muted colors appealed to me for some reason.

“Like the looks of our vinyl collection?” He asked, amused. “You look like you’ve never seen a record before.”

“I don’t think I have.”

“Shame. This one’s great,” He pulled out the album I’d been inspecting and sat it aside. He gazed at it with a fondness, like it was an old friend. “I’ll put it on sometime.”

I opened my mouth to say something - something stupid, no doubt - only to be interrupted by a deafening crack of thunder that shook the building.

“Cat,“ is all Levi had time to mutter before he raced back down the hall and into the workroom, frantically opening and closing cabinet doors. I followed and smiled when Sam brushed against my leg, meowing as I lifted all fifty pounds of him.

“Fuck, you’re a cat charmer. Okay - “ Levi pointed in some vague direction down the hall. “Basement’s the door on the left, the staircase creaks but you won’t fall through so don’t freak out. I’ll be there in a sec.”

I nodded and awkwardly shuffled, cat in arms, to what I assumed to be the basement door - a battered old thing, white paint chipped and peeling. I used my free hand to open the door, revealing a rickety staircase leading down into darkness. One creaking step after another I tiptoed down, sliding my hand along the wall in search of a lightswitch, but finding none. I sat Sam on the floor at the foot of the steps, the only light being from the open door at the top.

“Is there a light down here?” I shouted up the stairwell.

Levi didn’t shout back, but instead made his way down into the basement and shut the door behind him, a few heavy-looking bags in hand. He sat them against a wall with a thud and disappeared into the blackness my eyes still hadn’t adjusted to. “Power’s out.” He said after a moment of what sounded like clicking a switch on and off a few times. “Fucking fantastic. Thought this might happen - “ He dug through a bag and pulled out a variety of fancy looking candles - the kind you find in craft stores for, like, ten dollars a piece, and wonder what kind of person would spend ten dollars on a candle. Levi was that kind of person, apparently.

I watched as he used an old zippo lighter to light a dozen candles. They filled the room with warm yellow light that bounced off the walls, and coated everything in the scent of jasmines, vanilla, pumpkin spice, coffee. That was all it took for the isolated basement to feel just as friendly as the rest of the parlour, despite the muffled sound of thunder and wind leaking through the concrete walls. I flopped onto one of the two sofas - leather, just like the upstairs ones - that sat against a wall, and pulled out my phone to check the weather. If the noises outside were indicative of anything, I was starting to think it was, despite my pride, worse than I thought it was. A quick glance at the weather app confirmed that. The radar map was a mess of dark greens and reds and oranges, and the worst of it hadn’t even hit.

“What’s the weather looking like, besides ‘shit’?” Levi asked from his spot on the sofa opposite of me, separated by a glass coffee table covered in dust.

“Um,” I stuttered, not wanting to worry him even more. It was bad, even by my standards, but it was the truth and he’d find out whether I told him or not. “Not good, I guess. Don’t know if the tornado’s gonna hit us. They usually don’t, we’re in a weird spot, kind of a valley.”

“Mmm,” He hummed. I flipped onto my side and let my eyes wander away from my phone screen, stealing as long of a glance at Levi as I could without feeling like a creep. It was something I found myself doing at any possible opportunity, and I could only hope he didn’t notice. It was difficult to look away. Something about the angles in his face, the way he somehow looked cold and warm at the same time, his permanent glare - all of it blended together in a very aesthetically pleasing way. It felt strange to admit it to myself, but I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t pretty. That was the only word that fit. He was pretty - unfathomably, undeniably, irrefutably pretty.

“You have any other place to go?” He asked, breaking me out of my trance. His tone was cautious, as if he was afraid to pry, but too curious - or concerned - not to.

“Not really. I planned on walking around downtown ‘till the storm let up,” I admitted, as casually as someone can admit to having only slight suicidal ideation.

“That’s a fucking stupid idea.” He teased.

“Probably.”

“You can stay here if you want.”

“That’s a better idea.”

We fell into a comfortable silence for a while, the sounds of outside muffled and muted by thick walls. Only Sam’s obnoxiously loud purring and the persistent sound of rain and wind broke the quiet, but that too eventually melted into the atmosphere in much the same way I’d been melting into the sofa. The warm candlelight and rare non-hostile setting made me want to fall asleep, and I might’ve done just that if I wasn’t so uncomfortable with the thought of being vulnerable.

“Can I ask you somethin’?” I asked, my voice heavy with the beginnings of sleep and eyes half closed - or half open, if you’re an optimist.

“Hit me.”

“S’there a reason you can’t drive in this weather?” The question had been eating away at me for reasons unknown. It wasn’t really curiosity - in fact, I leaned more towards ‘concern’ than curiosity, but even still I wasn’t sure why.

“Long story,” Levi replied dismissively, sounding just as sleepy as I felt. Something about hearing his normally crystal clear voice laced with sleepiness made me feel something - another something I couldn’t put my finger on. “I’ll tell you if you want, though.”

“M’kay,” I agreed. “You don’t have to, though. If it’s… y’know, um - if it’s personal - “

“No,” He interrupted, saving me from the embarrassment I was sure to bring upon myself. “I don’t mind.”

“You don’t have to tell me stuff you don’t wanna.”

“I won’t tell you the whole thing then,” He compromised. “I will someday though. I’d like to.”

The thought that he, so quiet and reserved, would like to tell me something important to him was almost frightening. It was comforting to know that someone trusted me enough to expose what had to have been a dark secret, but it was a heavy responsibility and there was no doubt in my mind that I would fuck something up somehow. I always managed to fuck it up.

“Uh,” Levi said with a tired sigh before continuing. It was strange to hear him use a filler-word like ‘uh,’ it made him feel human when he had seemed so untouchable and flawless. “Back in Nebraska, we got a lot of bad storms around this time of the year, and then in winter we’d get blizzards. Around this time last year I got into a nasty car wreck during a thunderstorm. I - Damn. I guess that’s it.” He paused and yawned. “ Had to get surgery and shit. The weather just makes me nervous.”

I felt stupid for not assuming it was a car wreck - it seemed obvious now, I couldn’t think of any other reason to be afraid of driving in bad weather. Though I couldn’t shake the feeling that his reasoning was somehow anticlimactic, like there was something else, something more - He did say that he would tell me ‘the whole thing’ someday.

“There’s more to it,” He said, as if reading my mind. “That’s for another day though.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into the arm of the sofa I’d been using as a pillow, not really knowing what else to say. “Sorry if I was an asshole about driving you. I don’t mind.”

“I don’t care,” Levi said with a slight wave of his hand, his tone flat but not unkind. “It’s not a big deal. We’ve all got problems, darling.”

At those words, whatever that feeling was that his sleepy voice induced plucked at my heartstrings a bit too hard. It was all I could do to only mutter some incoherent agreement and roll over so my face was hidden - I could’ve sworn I heard him laugh, one of his airy light laughs.

“So, you asked me something. Could I ask you something then?” The softness returned to his voice, the same softness it held yesterday, a concerned caring tone that made my chest flutter and put my mind at ease. I knew whatever he asked would be something I’d be hesitant to answer, but part of me was okay with it.

“Mhm,” I mumbled in reply, trying and probably failing to hide the nervousness that was beginning to creep in.

There was a thick silence before he spoke again, softly, lowly, carefully. “What happened to your neck?”

My breath caught in my throat and suddenly I was very grateful I was turned with my back to him so he couldn’t see whatever strangled face I knew I was making. I should’ve expected such a question - I should’ve had an answer ready, an excuse, anything, but I had nothing, so I answered the only way I was used to answering.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see it. “What do you want me to tell you? Want me to give a detailed description of the shit I put up with at home? Don’t ask fucking pointless questions when you already know the answers,” I cringed as my voice started to crack and those tears I hated so much began forming in the corners of my eyes. There was no hiding that. “It is bullshit. I know.”

Another pause ensued as Levi moved to the sofa whose cushion I had my face hidden in. “Sit up,” He ordered. I did so - I didn’t know how to do anything besides obey, do as I was told, or there would be hell to pay. He sat beside me - maybe a little too close. I tried to wipe my eyes in a way that made it seem like I wasn’t, you know, about to cry, but the movement only burned my concealed wrists and that brought on more tears. Seventeen was too old to suffer abuse, but it was also, in my mind, too old to be crying about it. The mere act of crying filled me with overwhelming shame. Disappointment. It was wrong.

I felt Levi wrap his arm behind and around my upper back. There was some dull residual pain leftover from the other night, but otherwise, it was a gentle and comforting touch - nothing like the furious painful grabbing I was accustomed to at home - and it should’ve felt nice but it only made me want to cry more, goddamnit.

“Sorry,” I apologized against the damp fabric of my hoodie sleeve. “I don’t - I don’t even know why I’m crying, I don’t even know why. It’s so stupid. I wish I could just shut up.”

“Don’t be sorry,” He insisted. “I’m sorry I asked. It was a shitty thing to ask. I was never blessed with social grace.”

I laughed a little and nodded in agreement, still hiding my face in my hands.

“You’re not s’posed to agree with me,” He laughed in reply and pulled me just a bit closer - close enough that I should’ve recoiled, but I didn’t. No, instead I crossed my arms in my lap and leaned my head against his shoulder, into the black faux leather of his jacket that shouldn’t have been so comfortable. It just felt like the right thing to do - and, judging from the fact that he didn’t pull away or tell me to fuck off, it was the right thing to do. It somehow lifted and broke my heart at the same time, sitting there and being able to feel another person’s breathing. It was undoubtedly a ‘good’ feeling, but such innocent affection was something I’d been deprived of for a long, long time.

“I’ll beat you up if you get tears on my jacket,” He teased.

“Shut up.”

“Did you wake up this morning and think you’d be sitting with me in a cramped basement hiding from a tornado?”

“I guess not,” I smiled and suppressed a yawn. “S’not so bad though.”

“Mmm.”

We sat like that, closer than two kinda-sorta-friends maybe should sit, in comfortable silence, listening to the sounds of purring and rain and thunder and wind and the occasional blaring of tornado sirens outside - not unpleasant sounds, at least not when you’re nestled into someone’s shoulder, though I couldn’t help but notice the way Levi clenched his jaw and fought the urge to flinch at the sound of sirens.

I hated to break such an enjoyable silence, but I couldn’t fight it back anymore. I flitted my gaze over to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep before I spoke. “The thing on my neck is from a belt. I dunno if it’s a bruise or… I don’t know.”

Anger flashed in Levi’s eyes but disappeared as quickly as it came. “Looks like one. Does it hurt?”

“I mean,” I shrugged. “I guess, yeah, not as bad as it did yesterday. When’d you notice it?”

“Yesterday.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Didn’t wanna freak you out.”

“You’re weird.”

“I know,” He gave a weak smile that faded away after a brief moment. “Your dad pisses me off. I want to punch him in the face, seriously. No kid deserves that shit.”

“I might.” My words escaped before I had time to think about them - something I found myself doing way more often than I’d like. Levi shot me a look - mostly anger, but not the same anger he expressed a moment ago. It was hard for him to look angry in the warm golden candlelight.

“Shut it, you do not. ‘No kid’ doesn’t exclude you.”

His words flew over my head. I wanted to believe them, but I couldn’t - he barely knew me, didn’t know that I’d practically driven my mother and sister away. I’d brought the abuse upon myself.

“I’m tired,” I changed the topic. “I gotta go home unless you want me falling asleep on you.”

“I don’t mind,” He said. “I thought we clarified that I actually like being around you yesterday. Besides, you don’t even have a way to get home, genius.”

“I’ll steal your car.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” I yawned and rubbed my eyes, my thumbs holding my hoodie sleeves in place - there couldn’t have been a more inopportune time for them to slide down, and I wasn’t about to risk it. Not then, and not ever.

“Go to sleep,” Levi said through a yawn he’d caught from me.

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I nodded against his jacket and, after one content sigh, fell into a comfortable sleep - not the lonely nightmare-ridden sleep I usually endured.

No, this was a warm, soft, dreamless sleep, one I let Levi’s even breathing lullaby me into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey lovelies, sorry this took so long to get written. i've had the flu and a bunch of other real life stuff goin' on, but i promise this fic is always there in the back of my mind. i've got a lot of stuff planned, i'm just takin' it slow. i don't know if i even have the right to say there was fluff in this chapter but i hope y'all enjoyed it nonetheless. this chapter was important, it introduced a lot of things that'll be more relevant in the future, dunno if that's noticeable though... anyways, hope you liked it!
> 
> comments are beyond appreciated and are my main motivation to keep writing, so thank you!
> 
> EDIT  
> \----  
> hey y'all, little update. the beautiful lil-porkcutletbowl on tumblr ( jezze2302 on here ) made a beautiful fanart gif for this chapter and it literally made me cry, here's the link ( http://lil-porkcutletbowl.tumblr.com/post/156839498574/it-made-me-feel-like-a-sad-character-in-my-own ) and like i'm still in shock so y'all go check it out.


	7. Telescope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let me go, let me be, I don't need to be here, I'm alone, can't you see? Can't you see?

It was almost midnight by the time I decided I needed to go home. The weather had died down, so that wasn’t a valid excuse anymore, and every passing second I sat in the safety of the tattoo parlour increased the chances that Dad would kill me when I get home. The thought of seeing him again made my stomach turn and head hurt. I’d disappeared early in the morning for school and stayed out far longer than I usually did, giving him no explanation, no phone call, no text, nothing. The stubborn part of me wanted to say I didn’t need to give him an explanation for anything I did, but I knew I’d be paying for it eventually. It was a mistake I’d made countless times before - but is it really a mistake if it’s deliberate?

It was all I could do to hide my fear in the darkness of Levi’s car, our faces only occasionally illuminated by the reds and yellows and greens of stop-lights and street-lamps. I always liked the nighttime atmosphere of the city. After the most restful sleep I’d had in months, I was wide awake and everything was crystal clear. Even the quiet strums of guitar and muffled vocals on the radio sounded perfect in spite of the static. It was surreal and dreamlike, and I wished every second of every day could feel like it did there, driving through silent neighborhoods with someone I’d finally come to call a friend - the first one in years.

“Is this the street?” Levi asked without taking his eyes off the road.

“Yeah,” I replied, glancing at him for what was supposed to be a second but soon turned into a minute. The way his pale eyes reflected the bright lights outside like paint on a canvas was mesmerizing and I couldn’t look away - not that I really wanted to. I forced myself to avert my eyes when he glanced over and caught me staring.

“What’re you looking at?” He asked, his voice tinged with amusement and dripping with sarcasm. Another question he already knew the answer to.

“Dunno.” I hoped the way my hair fell over my face would hide my smile. The car came to a grinding halt in front of my battered house - every light was turned off, making it look vacant but I knew that wasn’t the case. Behind one of those walls, my dad said waiting, lurking, eager to claw at me and inflict pain that would’ve been unbearable if I wasn’t so used to it.

“Hey,” Levi pulled me out of my thoughts. “You have my number.”

I nodded.

“You’ll call me if you need to?”

I nodded - albeit a bit more hesitantly.

“Liar,” He said, but smiled. “If you don’t call me then I’ll call you, okay? Soon as I get home, I will.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” He repeated, letting the smile fade, and paused for a moment before continuing. “I’m serious. It won’t bother me if you call, it’ll bother me if you don’t.”

I only nodded again, and cursed myself for it. I hadn’t been able to shut up all day and now I was at a loss for words. “I - I know,” I added clumsily.

He made a face he made often but only now could I see what it was, even in the dark - he smiled with his eyes, while his mouth remained in a frown. It was painfully endearing. “Right. Goodnight, Eren.”

The car creaked in protest as I stepped out into the cold. “‘Night.”

I didn’t hear him drive away until the front door clicked shut behind me.

The inside of our cluttered home was pitch black and dead silent - it was unnerving, but a relief. It gave me a chance at escaping my father at least for a little longer, though I was, of course, only putting off the inevitable. I tiptoed up the stairs and down the hallway, as quietly as I could, holding my breath when the floor creaked beneath my feet. One, two, three steps down the hall, four, five - eleven steps to make it into the haven of my bedroom. It felt a bit safer there. I was happy to see it was completely as I left it - desk lamp turned on, bed unmade, laptop closed, windows open enough to let the freezing air in.

I crumpled into the mess of blankets on my bed and enveloped myself in the quilts, creating some illusion of safety, and sighed. The overwhelming fog of sadness was again seeping into my heart, for reasons I didn’t care to dissect.

The lovely thing about depression is that it hits out of nowhere, sometimes with reason, usually without.

It hits hard, fast, angrily - and it doesn’t leave until you do something about it. Some people cry, and though I felt like it, that wasn’t an option. Crying was weak and childish and wrong, that had been beaten into my skull - literally - until I knew better.

My eyes darted to the box under my bed, hidden in the shadows.

Carving lines into my skin wasn’t something I really wanted to do - It was something I needed to do, urgently, desperately, immediately. I needed the adrenaline high, the dizziness in my head, needed to see the blood cascading down my arm in a waterfall of pain - needed the consequent feelings of shame, disappointment, and embarrassment that always came afterwards.

Dramatic.

I flung the blankets off my bed and pulled my hoodie off, leaving me in nothing but a short sleeved shirt with my healing wounds exposed to my eyes - and my eyes only. I ran my right thumb over the raised skin on my left arm - where the worst of it was - something I did often in the loneliness of my room. Admiring my treasured secret, my unique collection of wounds that no one had ever laid eyes upon, and no one ever would - not if I could help it.

And so, with quick fluid motions of my wrist, I sliced a dozen or more fresh cuts - I hate the word - into my forearms, some deeper than others, some unavoidable retracing of old scars that covered more of my skin than not. It wasn’t like me to completely lose myself in the moment - usually I had the self control to quit after no more than five or so in one sitting, but the thought of my father waiting to punish me drove me to do more damage than was typical, though I guess there was nothing at all ‘typical’ about the situation.

I felt the familiar sting of tears in my eyes despite all my efforts, and that only made me want to continue, but the logical side of me knew I would already regret what I’d done in the morning. It would hurt to move my arms, hurt to stretch. It already did.

I shamefully slid the blades back into their rightful box and slid the box into its rightful place before taking my spot on my bed. It was my intention to try to fall into another restless sleep - that is, it was until my phone vibrated under my pillow and I watched Levi’s name flash across the screen.

Fuck.

Right.

He said he'd call me when he got home.

It was a losing situation on my side either way - if I didn't answer then he'd be worried and possibly angry, if I did answer then I'd have to pretend to be okay for the duration of the call, and that wouldn't be easy, considering the bloodied state of my arms and the numbness in my mind. I wrapped one arm in an old towel and picked up my phone with the other - hesitating for another ring, then another, then half of another until I swiped ‘answer call.’

“Hi,” I choked out after an agonizing few seconds of silence in which I forgot you’re supposed to say something when you answer the phone.

“Hello,” Levi’s voice sounded different over the phone. “what're you doing?”

It was a casual way to start a conversation, but he literally couldn't have asked a worse question. “Uh,” I winced and settled for an answer that wouldn't be a complete lie. “I - you know, just about to go to bed.”  

A pause, and then, “Okay. Just checking.”

“Checking?” I inquired, a little too defensively.

“Yeah, just checking in,” He repeated, as if that gave me any more of an explanation. “I’ll let you sleep then - “

“Wait, no, It's okay - you don't have to go, it's...” I trailed off as emotions started making their way back into my head, not completely sure why I was saying what I was saying and even more unsure of if it was making sense. “It’s - sorry, I don’t... “

“It’s okay,” His voice crackled through the speaker, his tone completely indifferent. “I can stay if you want.”

“Okay. Okay,” I stuttered. “Yeah, okay. That’d be nice. Thank you.”

My alarm clock blinked 1:14 A.M. It was selfish - I should’ve insisted he go to bed, it’s late, don’t wanna fuck up his sleep schedule after just one week of school, even if it was the weekend - but I didn’t. Selfish. Selfish, selfish, selfish, just like I always was.

“Okay,” Levi replied a moment later, a word we’d probably said a hundred times each in the past twelve hours. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” He continued, a bit quieter.

In spite of my pathetic situation, I couldn’t help but halfway smile into my pillow. “Don’t you need to sleep?”

“Nah, I don’t sleep much.”

I curled into the towel wrapped around my arm and sunk into the covers. “That sucks.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“It sounds pretty bad.”

There was silence for a few minutes - the sort of comfortable silence that was so rare and difficult to catch, and I longed to hold it in my hand forever, the pleasant half-awake quiet captured in my phone - until he broke it. “You asleep?”

“I wish,” I mumbled, and It was true. “You can go if you wanna.”

“I don't.”

“Why?” I asked, partly because I wanted to know if he was serious - and, if he was, to know what his answer would be. He sounded so sincere, the honey-laden words dripping from his voice shot daggers through my heart and caused that familiar yet somehow foreign ache in my chest, but he only replied with one of his flat vague answers.

“I worry about you.”

I didn’t know what words to say so I said none, only sighed a shaking breath into the phone speaker - the sort of uneven breathing that can only come from someone who’s been crying, and I hated myself for it, and I wanted to take that breath back but I couldn’t and maybe he didn’t notice -

“Eren, are you crying?”

“No.”

“You are the absolute shittiest liar,” His flat voice lilted into a tone of almost-amusement but not quite.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I cannot believe you’re apologizing for being a shitty liar. Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.”

“Eren.”

“Fuck, I know,” I said a little too loud, a bit too passionately, and I hoped Dad didn’t hear but his footsteps thudding up the stairs said otherwise. My heart dropped past rock-bottom. “Levi,” I spoke into the phone at only a whisper, maybe less. “I have to go right now - thank you for calling, but I have to - “

“What, why? Is - ”

One step, two steps, a pause -

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, goodnight - “ and I hung up, as awful as I felt about it.

Three steps, four steps - another pause - the bathroom door opening, closing, and silence followed by massive relief. I leaned over to turn my lamp off and pretend to be asleep in case he walked in, hoping that would deter him at least a little - sometimes it did. It was more trouble than it was worth to try to wake me up just to backhand me in the face a few times. I could only hope I’d be so lucky come morning.

It didn’t take long before my pretending turned into reality and I was pulled into a fidgety, miserable, paranoid sleep.  
  


The next morning was yet another gray morning. Soft white light leaked into my room from between the blinds and the faint sound of rain and wind persisted outside, the residual precipitation leftover from yesterday - it felt like the calm before a storm, despite the literal storms having already passed. The pain in my chest had remained there, and with it came some regret at having slept through the night with no incident - whether that incident would be death, the impending beating I was still waiting for, or otherwise, I didn’t care. I just wanted something, anything to break the monotonous ache my life had digressed into.

The house was silent, as it usually was when I woke up in the mornings. Dad was more often than not hungover as hell and incapable of getting out of bed before noon, while I was somewhat of an early-riser. Sleep was a good escape, but it was fleeting and still almost as miserable as my waking life, and there was no point bothering in something so pointless. Sleep is just death without the commitment and I couldn’t help but feel like my free trial was running out, like some invisible clock was ticking away my seconds.

I had fallen asleep in the clothes I’d worn the previous day, with the exception of the hoodie I’d shed last night during my lapse of sanity - it laid on the floor, looking about as dejected as a hoodie can look. It brought back less-than-pleasant memories, still fresh in my mind and on my arms, physical reminders of my weakness and inability to deal with my problems like a normal fucking human. I slid the mess of blankets onto the floor and studied the irritated lines that littered my skin, the majority of them perfectly straight, some a little jagged, some still leaking blood, some white, some pink, but most of them red. It was easy to forget I did it to myself - I don’t look at them and think of them as wounds I inflicted with my hand, but as consequences for my actions. There was nothing poetic or beautiful or symbolic about them, they were just products of my stupidity.

Looking at them for too long made me nauseous so I slipped back into my hoodie.  
  


It took all of twenty minutes before I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps and door-slamming that meant only one thing. Dad was awake. Dad was awake and angry - angry enough to wake up at ten in the morning - and it was almost certainly thanks to me.

His words from the other night surfaced in my memory. _“You. You’re just like your mother. You don’t even fight back. Is it because you know you’re weak?”_

Those words had passed me by when he first said them - I was blinded by the pain and panic he and the belt had inflicted, but now, days later, sitting in the quiet of my room with that same panic rising once again, they hit me. They were true. I wanted to fight back - I wanted to spit in his face and push him away and throw textbooks at his head, but I was scared and cowardly and, above all, weak.

I held my breath as the doorknob turned and Dad stumbled in, his eyes bloodshot with rage more intense than was normal, even for him.

He wasted no time with words, no speech, no lecture of responsibility - and this time I sort of wished he had. It took only a few short seconds before he was grabbing the neck of my hoodie as leverage to pin me against the wall - a few seconds until his face was inches from mine, the pungent smell of alcohol and tobacco and death floating on his breath as he screamed something into my ears but it wasn’t making sense and it wasn’t quite words, only sounds, sounds I couldn’t decipher for what felt like forever until my brain finally caught up with reality, and even I only caught fragments of what he was saying.

“I have a fucking right to know where you are,” He spat as I tried to control my frantic breathing. “I have a right, and for you to deny me of something so - so - goddamnit, Eren! Goddamnit, you aren’t listening!”

Before I knew what was happening, my head was slamming into the hard floor. All it took to keep me down was a swift kick to the side. I didn’t fight it. It was all I could do to muster the strength to back into a corner and stare straight ahead at nothing in particular, immobilized with fresh pain and paralyzed with fear.

“You think you’re good enough to fucking stay out until the middle of the night without telling me?” He asked, but I knew better than to answer. I’d made that mistake before. “In the middle of a fucking tornado? Where the fuck were you, Eren? School?”

I nodded, clueless as to what else to do.

“Bull-fucking-shit, school was cancelled. Don’t you dare lie to me. I quit putting up with lies when your mom left - and you’re no different, are you? Just another fucking liar, another failure, another fuck-up waiting to stab me in the back - “

“Stop talking.” The confidence in my voice surprised me almost as much as it surprised him. I couldn’t bare it - I was used to him spewing his poison at me, but never Mom. Never. Not since before she left. He knew it got to me - I wanted to be strong and endure it quietly, obediently - that’s what she would want - but I couldn’t.

“What did you - did you just - “ It was satisfying to hear him stutter over his words like I so often did.

“Stop talking about her,” I went on, wincing at the sharp pain in my side as I stood. “You don’t even know her. You never did. She’s not - “

He silenced me, taking a fistfull of my tangled hair and slamming my head into the wall for what felt like the hundredth time but was only the second, hard enough to induce black spots in my eyes. He couldn’t seem to think of any appropriate words to say, so instead of speaking, he elbowed me in the face - a thousand times worse than a fist.

I hissed at the pain and sank back into the floor.

It wasn’t often that I decided he’d crossed a line and gone too far in his ‘discipline,’ because it wasn’t often that he did cross a line and go too far, at least by my standards, but the pain induced by elbowing me in the face gave me more than enough reason to come to the conclusion that, yes, he had crossed that metaphorical line.

I might’ve fought back for once if he didn’t stomp out of my room and slam the door.

I stepped backwards into my bed and held my wrist in my hand as I tried to remember how to breathe, remember how to talk, how to move, how to do anything besides curl inwards and tremble, but my brain wouldn’t cooperate and it was messy and fuzzy and something inside it felt wrong. It was routine for me to sleep the pain away, but this was a different anguish. It was loud and demanded attention I wasn’t capable of giving. Logic dictated that I call someone - a family member, a friend, anyone - but the longer I searched my brain for someone I knew I could confide in, the heavier the ache in my chest became, because soon I realized there was no one. I had no one.

These were the moments I knew I was completely fucking alone - as alone as any human could be. So entirely alone that I’d resorted to literally self destructing with razorblades and food deprivation and sleep, so alone that I craved the warmth of blood on skin and had long forgotten what ‘safety’ felt like. I was a lost cause. I had, somewhere along the line, locked myself in a cage of sorrow and swallowed the key.  
  


I don’t know how long I sat there, curled up on my bed with my face in my hands, but it was long enough for me to fall asleep and for the sun to be setting when I finally woke up.

 

It had been a long sleep that passed me by in the blink of an eye, and I felt no better rested for it, but some small part of me knew that if I hadn’t slept then I would’ve done something far more destructive - God only knows what. That was the bad news. The good news was that the house was dead silent and a quick glance out the window confirmed that there was no car in the driveway - and, actually, that wasn’t really good news, because it meant I was alone, which should’ve been good news, but ‘alone’ translated into ‘vulnerable to my own suicidal ideation,’ and, goddamnit, this wouldn’t be happening if I’d not woken up in the first place.

In fact, the idea of not waking up after my next nap sounded appealing, tempting, and it would be easy to down a bottle of the pain pills in the bathroom, and I wouldn’t be around to deal with the consequences anyway, not that there would be any - Dad wouldn’t give two shits, Mikasa would probably never know, Armin might wonder if he could’ve prevented it but schoolwork would bury his regret in no time. It would be so easy and fast, and they’d be able to say that I died doing what I loved most - sleeping - and it would be fucking hilarious, and, fuck - _whose sense of humor does that remind me of -_

A vibration from my phone answered my question before I could. Levi’s name flashed across the screen for a brief second, indicating that he’d sent me some text message. A message I was curious about also dreaded opening, because deep down, I knew he did care for me at least a little, and that was scary. It was a reason to feel guilt for my hypothetical ‘suicide’ - what an ugly word - and I didn’t want to feel guilt, I wasn’t supposed to feel guilt. That defeated the point. I wanted freedom and rest, guilt-free, no strings attached.

 _This is what rock bottom feels like,_ I realized.

I opened the message with clammy fingers and had to reread it one, two, three - four times for it to make sense, because letters weren’t quite looking like letters and certainly not like words.

_Levi: good afternoon… want to do something?_

I tossed the idea of ‘doing something’ around in my head. Moving from my spot in bed felt impossible, but I needed to do something, anything to distract me from myself. It wasn’t like it could get any worse - but then again, the prospect of Levi, of all people, seeing me in such a blatantly broken state wasn’t something I could live with. The more awake I became, the more prominent the pain in my side, my head - my arms -became. It would be embarrassing. I hadn’t yet ruined his image of me, and seeing me like this would be a sure way to do that.

I forced my fingers to cooperate as I typed out a reply.

_Eren: Sorry_

_Eren: Not feeling well_

He wasted no time in replying - it couldn’t have been over a minute before my screen lit up again.

_Levi: still a shitty liar_

_Levi: omw to pick you up, be ready_

Fuck.

_Eren: Please don’t_

After five minutes with no reply I figured it was a lost cause and I should at least try to make myself look presentable - as presentable as a person with two very fucked up arms who knows how many bruises _can_ look, anyway. I sat up and waited for the blackness in my vision to fade before I - with my good hand - slid my shoes on and dragged a comb through my matted mess of hair. In the bathroom I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror - faint bruises dotted my jawline and my eyes were more red than they were their usual green, or blue, or whatever. I pulled my hoodie and shirt up to reveal a black and purple bruise that spanned from the top of my hip to the middle of my ribcage. Great. Levi wouldn’t have to see that though, thankfully. It hurt like hell, but I could hide that. If there was one thing I was good at, it was hiding things.

I didn’t bother pulling my sleeves up for another examination. I didn’t need a visual to know that they were more mutilated than they’d been in months, maybe years - but that, too, would be easy enough to hide. It shouldn’t have been so easy, but it was.

The doorbell rang the second I stuffed my phone into my pocket and took one last glance in the mirror. I could only hope it wasn’t obvious that I’d been at my lowest only an hour before.

I hesitated as I opened the front door and gave my best attempt of a smile to Levi. He was adorned in a - black, of course - scarf, and his usual jacket over a shirt brandishing the name of a band I’d never heard of. For a moment, he returned the smile, but it was replaced by a frown as soon as he had enough time to take in the sight of me.

“Fuck, Eren,” He said, visually picking apart every inch of my face. “I - are you sick?”

I coughed to rid my throat of its post-sleep soreness and tried not to let it reflect the sadness in my chest. “Told you I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think…” He trailed off and I tried to ignore the way his eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly as he spotted the light bruises on my face, and then the way they furrowed as he saw the way I was holding my own wrist. I should’ve known better than to try to fool him. He saw straight through me, he always did. “Eren, listen - “

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I interrupted. “It’s freezing, are we going somewhere or not?”

“I’m the one who invited you out, dumbass,” He replied as he craned his neck to peek behind me into the house. “I have the day off, if you want to come over.”

I felt the odd twinge of excitement and that familiar something-else-feeling at his words. “Like, to your house?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, to my house. I do have one, you know.”

“Right.” I forced a chuckle and stepped out into the cold, shutting the front door behind me and not-so-subtly avoiding any movement that wasn’t necessary for walking. “That sounds good. I’d like to see your house.”

“Thought you might. It’s nothing special,” Levi brushed a dead leaf off my shoulder as we walked to his car - an action I found somehow sweet and terrifying at the same time - sweet, because it’s Levi and it was so uncharacteristically affectionate, yet terrifying because it was physical and he could’ve just as easily shoved me into the concrete.

The drive there was, for the most part, silent, but that gave me time to admire the way the oranges and pinks reflected off the windshield and got caught in Levi’s eyes like butterflies in jars, and the way he mouthed the words to whatever song was on the radio when he thought I wasn’t looking. The more time I spent with him, the more I noticed the constant music that followed him. Whether it was a record playing in the parlour or a song on the radio, he was never in the utter silence I'd grown accustomed to. I made a mental note to ask him about it sometime.

As it turned out, Levi lived only ten short minutes away from me, in a smallish house on the edge of downtown - because it was close to the tattoo parlour, I assumed. It was a weathered red brick house that I was surprised to have never taken much notice of before, but looking at it then, I could only describe it as being distinctly ‘Levi.’ I couldn’t imagine him living anywhere else, in the same way I couldn’t imagine him working anywhere else, or wearing anything else, or being anyone else.

“Welcome - ” He announced as we stepped out of the car, “ - to my humble abode. Stunning, I know.”

“It’s very ‘you,’” I said as he fumbled to unlock the front door, one of those doors with the wrought iron cross-hatching bars in front of glass. He hummed in a thoughtful sort of way, but offered no further reply as we walked inside.

The inside of the house carried that lovely, familiar, burnt incense mingled with cigarette smoke smell - familiar, because it matched that of the tattoo parlour, the car, his jacket, the air wherever he went, and lovely because it had started to symbolize some sort of safety in my mind. Nothing at all like the stale air at home that reeked of dirty water and alcohol.

His house was somehow cluttered and spotless at the same time. Unfinished paintings, drawings, sketches on notebook paper hung taped to the walls - but none on the floor. Every sofa pillow, crooked lampshade, half-open window, every stray item strewn clumsily on a shelf - it was all a bit unorganized, but deliberately so, as if he was _trying_ to achieve that tastefully cluttered look. He’d done it well, of course.

“Everywhere you go has this… This air about it,” I noted, suddenly completely unafraid to voice anything that came to my mind, however incoherent it might be. Maybe it was the smell. Maybe it was something in the air. Levi smirked and patted the spot on the sofa beside him.

“Does it?”

“Yeah,” I continued as I sat down, relieved, because I wasn’t sure how much longer my legs could carry me. “Like, the atmosphere, you know? I don’t know.”

“No, I know,” He let his eyes narrow and, again, seemed thoughtful. “It's like that with you too.”

I was quiet in hopes that he might continue, but he changed the subject with a brief shake of his head. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No thanks.”

“Drink?”

“I’m good.”

He shot me a look that made my stomach twist into knots and made me wish I’d insisted on staying at home. I’d be lying if I said his house didn’t feel better in every way, but at least at home I wouldn’t have to worry about people _caring_ about me. Being cared about was complicated and messy and unfamiliar and part of me didn’t want to admit that Levi really did seem to care, at least a little, which was more than most people. Armin ‘cared’ for the me that he knew - the moody, anxious, accident-prone me who liked to draw and was always running late in the mornings, the me who flinched at loud noises and swift movements for no discernable reason, the me who declined weekend plans and sucked at returning his calls often enough that he quit trying. It was different with Levi. He knew more of me than anyone I could think of - he _knew_ my bruises weren’t from brawls behind the school, knew why I shied away from the gentlest touch, and something made me believe he knew even more than that, but only time would tell. He knew the ugly, broken, _real_ me, and he still cared - at least, he acted like it.

It shouldn't have been so scary, but it was. I should've been glad and relieved to finally be halfway confiding in someone, but I was just afraid and confused. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense - in the beginning it had been easy to write off Levi’s invitations as loneliness and, as he had confessed, curiosity, but I couldn’t think of a solid reason for him to be concerned for me. My problems didn’t have to be his problems and I wanted it to stay that way. It was the least I could do.

“Staring is rude,” Levi teased, successfully pulling me back into the reality I’d unknowingly abandoned. I let my gaze fall to my hands and frowned at the tiny pricks and microscopic scars on my fingers from clumsily handled blades.

“Sorry,” I said, and attempted a smile, but it came out more like the crooked grimace Levi gave me so often. I doubted it was so endearing when I did it.

“Eren, are you...” He sighed and let his words hang in the air. “...Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I answered, automatically, without really thinking about it. It was easier that way.

“Don’t give me that shit, please,” He snapped in some combination of frustration and what sounded like desperation. I opened my mouth to protest but he cut me off with another shake of his head. “I’m not stupid, I know when you’re lying and I hate it. I hate that I hate it. I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong - I know I said you don’t have to, but - goddamnit - I don’t know, fuck.”

“I…” I paused and bit my tongue to keep from apologizing again. “It freaks me out, talking about - you know…” I trailed off and waved my hand in a way that I hoped got my point across. “But you didn’t invite me over to play therapist, did you?”

“Shit, no, I’m sorry. It’s just, you remind me of me. It worries me. I don’t know, I can’t help it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “God. I’m never like this.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I’m being an asshole.” Levi laughed, a cynical apologetic chuckle. “Just, if you ever need to talk about anything, call me or text me or something, okay?”

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes at such a cliche offer, thoughtful as it may have been. “I just don’t get why you care at all,” My words came out a bit harsher than I meant for them to, but if Levi was insulted then he didn’t show it. I closed my tired eyes and sank backwards into the fabric of the sofa. “I’m not special, or exceptional at anything, I’m just some kid you stood up for on the first day of school. There are other people. It’s a big world.”

“Other people fucking suck,” Levi declared. “I hate the vast majority of them, and you’re one of the few exceptions.”

I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.

“You barely know me,” I pointed out.

A pause. “Do you remember what you said a couple days ago on the bridge?”

I shook my head, eyes still closed.

“I asked you what you were thinking about, and you said you were tired of everything and just wanted to sleep.”

“Ugh,” I groaned at the memory - what a fucking dramatic thing to say. “I remember.”

“I didn't say so, but I heard it, Eren. I know what you mean. I know how it feels. I won't pretend to know exactly what you're going through, because one, I don't, and two, it's none of my business. I just…” I opened my eyes in time to see his meet mine. “I know it's shitty to feel alone on top of everything else.”

I nodded in solemn agreement and pretended there weren't tears building in my eyes.

“Don't think you're alone, okay?”

Fuck. I leaned forward and cradled my face in my hands, attempting to be discrete about the tears I was trying and failing to wipe away with the cuffs of my jacket sleeves. Crying due to someone else's kindness was different than crying due to loneliness, but it was still crying and I still hated it.

“Shit, Eren,” Levi tentatively rested his hand on my back as he spoke, unknowingly near a still-healing bruise. “I'm not trying to make you cry.”

“I'm - I know, I'm sorry,” I apologized between muffled sniffles. “It's just the way you said it - I don't know. It's like when you're sad and someone asks if you're okay and you just fall apart - just because they asked. I don't know why I'm like this. It’s not - I'm just…”

“...Not used to it,” He finished my sentence in a way that sounded more like a confirmation than a question. I nodded against the fabric of my sleeves.

His hand wandered from my back to my forehead where he slid it under my messy bangs and held it there for what felt like forever. “You're burning up,” He noted as he pulled away.

“Fucking fantastic,” I muttered between shaking breaths. I hadn't thought I was really getting sick - that was more an excuse to discourage Levi from picking me up - but there I sat, apparently ‘burning up.’

“I’m sorry,” I ran my hands through my hair. “It's like I can't talk to you without doing… This. “ I motioned to my face before covering it with my hands again. “It should be illegal to cry in your house. It's too nice.”

He laughed, a sad, sort of uneven laugh. “It's okay, ‘long as you don't make a mess.”

“I _am_ the mess.”

“Shut up.”

I wiped away the few remaining tears that lingered on my eyelashes and sighed. “I could fall asleep right here, right now.”

Levi scooted a little closer - close enough to playfully bump me with his shoulder, close enough for us to be barely touching, and it was such an innocent touch, it only made me want to cry more. I might have if I had any tears left.

“You can, if you want.”

“No, oh my God. That’s so lame. You invited me over and I’m about to fall asleep on your couch. I’m so lame.”

“Nah,” Levi walked to a closet near the hall and tossed me a blanket so neatly folded I felt bad unfolding it. “I didn’t really plan on doing anything anyway.”

“I’m sure you didn’t plan on letting me nap in your living room,” I wrapped myself in the blanket and fell onto my unbruised side, glad to have another layer separating my injuries from the world. Somehow laying there felt a thousand times more comfortable than laying in my own bed - a thousand times _safer_.

Levi turned off a lamp sitting on a corner-table, enveloping the room in the orange and blue light of the sunset outside. I saw his silhouette shrug in the darkness. “I guess not. You need to be home by any specific time?”

I shrugged in return. “Do _you need_ me home by any specific time?”

“No,” He said with an odd, unidentifiable lilt. “No. Of course not. I’ll wake you in a few hours if you haven’t woken yourself up.”

He walked by and ruffled my hair in passing - I didn’t flinch, for some reason. I didn’t feel the need to. “M’kay.”

I listened as his quiet footsteps faded after one, two, three - five steps down the hall, and I listened as a door - his bedroom door, probably - closed - not slammed. The only sounds remaining were the occasional chirps of birds as a car drove by and far-away police sirens - sounds I’d heard countless times before, but they felt different as I was pulled under the fog of sleep. They blended together into a symphony and swayed back and forth like music, a neverending song that lullabied me into a soft sleep.

 

Maybe it was something in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, so this chapter got longer than i meant for it to get. i kinda didn't follow my outline, like, at all, so i hope this is coherent and not too crazy and made at least a little sense... also, sorry for the excess of eren sleeping. he just, you know, sleeps a lot...depression does that, lmao.
> 
> i want to give, yet again, another big thanks to lil-porkcutletbowl on tumblr ( jezze2302 on here) for encouraging me to write this and just being a great friend in general. also, go check out her fic 'bring me back to life,' it's amazing so far and yeah. okay. hope everyone enjoyed this and i hope it wasn't too bad!! comments are appreciated as usual, and i'm always open to suggestions for potential advancements. thanks!!!


	8. Sunrise Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're either coming or you just left but you're always on the way towards a sunrise or a sunset, a scribble or a sonnet.

I wasn't used to waking up to anything but the sound of either screaming or silence. Waking up to the soft murmur of television was a welcome change. I wasn't used to opening my eyes to anything but pitch black or blinding light, either, but opening my eyes to soft blue light and the warm features of Levi’s living room was equally as pleasant of a surprise. I didn't complain when I noticed he was sitting at the foot of the couch - barely, slightly, sort of making contact with my leg through the blanket - and scribbling on some paper on the table, illuminated only by the light projected from the television.

It was the happiest I could remember waking up in what seemed like forever - at least, it certainly wasn't  _ sadness _ . The sleepy fog in my brain made the residual soreness in my side melt away, made the bruises and stinging and tiny pinpricks of pain disappear, at least for a while. I wanted to close my eyes and wake up to it all over again.

“Good morning,” Levi said through a yawn without even glancing away from his work. Being wrapped in a quilt over a sort-of-kind-of oversized sweater made him look terribly non-intimidating - it made him look  _ soft _ . 

“S’morning?” I croaked.

The tiniest hint of a smile flashed across his face but disappeared in an instant. “It’s two in the morning, so you could say that, yeah.”

I added the numbers in my head and came to the conclusion I'd been sleeping for - God - almost eight hours. I groaned at the realization, but he only laughed one of those small laughs. He seemed very lively for someone awake at two in the morning. More lively than usual, in fact.

“Your fever’s gone. Don’t know if you remember, but I had you take your temperature earlier. I was gonna wake you up, but you were knocked out...” He twirled a pen between his fingers before putting it to the paper again. “You were really passed out. Like, you looked dead - and grumpy. You look grumpy when you sleep.”

I sat upright and propped myself up against the back of the couch before, again, waiting for the black spots in my eyes to disappear. Maybe I  _ was _ dead - If being dead felt like anything, it was this; pleasant, painless, mostly comfortable.

“Grumpy?” I mumbled, amused, after his words set in. “I look  _ grumpy _ when I sleep?”

“Yeah. It’s cute though - it’s a cute grumpy.”

I tried to force a nervous laugh but ended up choking on air for an agonizing few seconds. Smooth.

“What're you doing?” I caught my breathe and changed the topic, craning my neck to peek at whatever it was Levi was writing, or, evidently, drawing.

“Stuff for work,” He muttered, as if it was a terrible inconvenience.

I scanned the paper and made out a few separate flowers, a cross or two, and a particularly intricate bird in the center of the page. It was difficult to make out the details in the dark, but I had no doubt that each drawing was equally stunning. 

”Why don’t you turn the lights on?”

He shrugged. “I like it better in the dark.”

“Creepy,” I teased, and was rewarded when the corners of his mouth turned upwards into something like a smile. He sat his pen on the table and sighed - a sort of sad, sort of tired, sort of confused sigh. I leaned back and breathed a similar sigh as the vague pain under my skin began to return.

We exchanged a fleeting look that said everything we'd left unsaid until that point, a glance that asked every question of ‘are you okay?’ and ‘what happened?’ and answered them just as easily. 

Of course, Levi wasn't satisfied by only a brief wordless glance. “It's okay if you don't want to talk about it,” He said, unsteadily. “But if you do, then, you know. I don’t mind. I - I know you probably don't want to talk about it  _ right now _ , but when you do -  _ if _ you do...”

I nodded and studied my hands, the threads in the blanket, the loose strings on my hoodie sleeves, anywhere but his eyes, until the silence was broken as he changed the subject.

“I assume you aren’t going to be able to fall asleep after that nap.”

“I guess not,” I scoffed. “Haven’t you slept?”

“Nah,” Levi shook his head and focused on the crime show playing on the television, nonchalantly, as if  _ not  _ being asleep at two in the morning was a normal thing. “I don’t get tired very often. Are you hungry?”

The idea of eating someone  _ else’s  _ food in someone  _ else’s  _ house felt wrong and I hated the thought of it, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t  _ starving  _ after not eating all day.  _ Starving. _

_ Is that really a bad thing? _

What the fuck, of course it’s a bad thing.

“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled as I pushed those thoughts away, at least for the time being. “I - yeah, I guess so. I guess I should head home.”

He shot me a puzzled glance. “It’s a bit late. You can just stay here if you want.”

I swallowed whatever unpleasant - or maybe it was a  _ pleasant _ feeling that was rising in my throat - something about the matter-of-fact tone in his voice, the way he phrased the invitation, as if he didn’t have to think twice before offering. It was a strange feeling I didn’t have a word for - or, at least, couldn’t remember the word for. 

But it wasn’t a bad feeling - no, it was a feeling I could get used to.

“I - I don't know,” I stuttered as every possible reason why I  _ shouldn’t  _ stay popped into my head. “I don't want to - you know, intrude _ ,  _ or...“

He did that thing with his mouth again, that little crooked ‘smile’ that wasn't really a smile but was about as much of a smile he was willing to give. I only wish he’d hold the look for more than half of a second.

“Oh, please. It’d be more of a hassle to drive you home - and besides,” He draped his quilt over the back of the couch as he stood up - It felt strange craning  _ my  _ neck to look up at  _ him  _ when it was always the other way around. “You’re good company, and that’s hard to come by. C’mon, let’s get something to eat.”

I rose from my warm spot to follow him to the kitchen and shuddered as the inevitable cold air seeped through my clothes, no longer insulated by a blanket. I would've stayed there buried under the covers forever if it was up to me - though the cold was, admittedly, a more solid excuse not to remove my jacket. 

That was reassuring. 

“So,” Levi’s voice pulled me away from whatever dark places my thoughts were taking me. He opened and closed a few cupboards - standing on his toes to do so. “We have two options - toast, or toast. That okay?”

I chuckled and leaned against a pristine counter. “Sounds amazing.” And it  _ did  _ sound amazing - in theory. In reality, the thought of forcing myself to eat anything was repulsive and made my skin crawl, but I tried to ignore that. Something told me I wouldn’t have much luck refusing food at Levi’s house.

_ It’s easier to be sad at home, _ I decided, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing.

  
  
  
  


The next four hours were spent on the sofa watching terrible low-budget films, eating obscene amounts of buttered toast, falling in and out of sleep, followed by Levi jolting awake and and swearing that he’d kill me if I got crumbs on the sofa, followed by me insisting I was being careful, followed by giggling from the both of us.

It was nice, sitting there, enveloped together in the same heavy blanket, surrounded by the soft lighting and pleasantly chilly air - not to mention pleasant company. It was nice to feel  _ safe _ . It was nice to be able to laugh at bad acting and stupid little things and it was nice to be able to laugh at all, to smile at all, even if it was over small stuff. The world outside was freezing, but inside, it was warm, and I wasn’t sure if the warmth was coming from my hoodie or the blanket or Levi or my chest, but it was there, and it was really, really,  _ really  _ nice.

“Hey,” Levi said, turning to me during a lull in whatever movie was on. “I’m feeling very reckless, very spontaneous, and generally insane. Let’s do something.”

I let out a short laugh, but decided to play along. “At five in the morning?”

“Fuck yeah, why not?”

I shrugged. “I’dunno, it’s late.”

“You’re tired?”

“Well, no, but - “

“Good, me neither.” He cut me off and hopped off the couch, taking the blanket with him, and folding it into a neat square. I watched as he pulled an extra coat over his sweater and slid his shoes on, dumbfounded at his breaking-of-personality - or at least, what _I_ _thought_ was his personality. He was full of surprises.

“Okay, let’s - wait - shit, hold on,” He swore and strode into the kitchen.

In the dim light of the kitchen, I watched from the doorway as he pulled a tiny orange bottle from a cabinet cluttered with many similar tiny orange bottles - a sight that made my stomach twist into knots. It felt  _ wrong _ to see someone so seemingly perfect, so flawless, downing a cocktail of little blue and white pills as if it was routine. The half-empty state of the bottles told me it  _ was _ routine.

The surprise must’ve shown on my face.

Levi cleared his throat and made a bitter face. “It’s just - just antidepressants, mostly, and some stuff for sleeping - “ He shot a fond look at the bottles and chuckled. “ - they’re my best friends.”

I returned the laugh, relieved that he didn’t treat it as a touchy subject, something that should be whispered in private and brushed under the rug, like so many others did. It was refreshing to find someone relatively unashamed - at least, he seemed to be, from what I could tell. 

That’s what I wanted to believe, but I couldn’t ignore the way he hesitated for a fraction of a second at the word ‘antidepressants.’

He sat each bottle back into their rightful spots in the cabinet and smiled a quiet smile before we both turned and left.

  
  
  


The darkness outside wasn’t the heavy darkness that I drowned in so often. It was beautiful blackness that spread in every direction for a thousand miles, broken only by headlights reflected in rain puddles that shattered like glass when we drove through them. Similarly, the silence wasn’t the stifling sort that made my ears ring in quiet rooms. It was comfortable and exciting and it held promises of words not yet spoken, silence interrupted only by indecipherable music on the radio, by crickets outside, by the sounds of wind and buildings flying by.

 

Even in the dark, it didn’t take long for me to figure out where he was driving. Lit only by our phone flashlights, the forest and its creek was as beautiful and serene as ever, if not more so. By the time we felt our way through the trees and to the bridge, there wasn’t a need for artificial lights; the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, streaking the black sky in deep blues and greens and oranges - the picturesque southern sunrise I’d known my entire life but never took the time to appreciate. Seated beside Levi in our usual spots on the bridge, I don’t think I ever appreciated it more. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” He asked; more of an observation than a question, really. “Cliche shit like this, I mean.”

“Cliche?”

“We’re watching the sunrise from a bridge in a forest. If that’s not cliche, then I don’t know what is.”

“It is nice,” I shrugged, and smiled - though he couldn’t see it in the dim light. I thought about saying  _ ‘It’s more than nice - it’s beautiful, it’s perfect, and I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in this moment,’  _ because that’s how I felt, but I kept my mouth shut like I always did.

Silence fell on us for another few minutes while the sun rose over the trees, the only sounds being the chirping of waking birds and rushing water. I’d always been an early riser, but it wasn’t often that I got the chance to experience the sunrise outside, much less with someone else. Doing it alone didn’t sound as appealing, somehow.

I tore my eyes away from the sky and looked over at Levi - who’d been looking at me already, I realized. Maybe I should’ve been annoyed or offended, but I wasn’t. There wasn’t a trace of anything malicious in his eyes - not that there ever was when he looked at me. I hoped it would stay that way.

“What?” I asked, only a little defensively, because what else do you say when someone’s staring at you?

“You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered, again, like I always did - but this time I took a second to think about it. I thought about the incessant pain in my arms that was dull and sharp at the same time, and of the purple bruise hiding under my shirt, and of the healing welt on my neck, and of whatever other scars I knew I’d earn when I went home - and I decided that, no, maybe I wasn’t ‘okay,’ but it was easier to say ‘yeah’ than it was to say that, so that’s what I did.

He didn’t seem as satisfied with my answer as I did. But instead of prying further, he extended his hand to where mine dangled over the rail and wordlessly entwined our fingers. It wasn’t something I realized I wanted to do until it was happening, and it wasn’t until it was happening that I realized I  _ really _ didn’t want to let go. 

“Is this okay?” He asked, in a soft voice I hadn’t heard before, a voice he didn’t look capable of. Another surprise.

“Yes - yeah, it’s - yeah. It’s okay, I like it.” 

“Good” - He tightened his grip, only a little - “So do I.”

_ I’m holding hands with a guy and watching the sunrise,  _ I noted to myself.

_ We’re holding hands, and it should feel wrong, but it doesn’t. _

_ It doesn’t feel wrong at all.  _

_ It feels so right. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow this chapter is a lot shorter than i meant for it to be, sorry, y'all. and it took ages to write. real life has been beyond hectic in every way and it's been hard to find time to work on this. i still find it so wild that people are reading this, like... that's just so unfathomable to me, even 8 chapters in. i still worry that nothing i write makes sense and doesn't flow naturally or whatever, but if y'all are reading it then i'll keep writing it. basically, i don't know what y'all see in this fic but i'm glad you're enjoying it!! 
> 
> as always, comments make my day and kudos are appreciated.


	9. - news -

hey everyone !! first of all sorry for the long-ish absence, i don't have any real excuse besides school's been busy and , ya know, i'm lazy, but hey .

 

but that's not what this is about ! i just wanted to tell everyone that this fic will be **discontinued** , for a variety of reasons. particularly because i'm crazy dissatisfied with where it's going. i was at a super bad time in my life when i started writing it (who would've thought, right?) and i'm just not in that bad spot anymore, so i feel much less of a connection with this story. i haven't been taking it very seriously - i didn't even expect anyone to read it, so i didn't really plan it out before i started writing it. **basically, this fic was an emotional release and writing exercise and it's just not serving those purposes anymore.**

 

i'm glad i wrote what i did write, if not only because people read it and enjoy it (thanks, y'all) - **and don't think this is the end of this story!** i'll be writing a whole 'nother fic extremely similar to this one - because let's face it, this fic is my first ever fic and it's like my baby. i can't let this universe disappear into the internet void to be forgotten. my next course of action, as far as writing goes, is to write a short 10 chapter fic i'll be publishing on here to improve technical writing skills. after that short fic i'll start this one over. it'll be very different, but also very similar; it'll definitely have the same sort of vibe.

 

 **however, if anyone wants to continue this fic or 'adopt' it, feel free!** the rewrite of it will be different enough that it'll be discernible as a separate fic and i would be seriously honored if someone wanted to sort of 'take over' crossing cypress creek. take it from here and write it in your own direction, or wherever you want it to go. i'll give you my super secret notes if you want something to work with, and i also have the beginnings of the ninth chapter finished if you want to go off that too. if you're interested in this then message me on tumblr and we can discuss!

 

okay, blah blah blah, i think that's everything i need to say about this. now i'm gonna say some sentimental stuff so skip this last paragraph if you want.

 

uhh, basically, this fic was the written equivalent of therapy for me, kinda. i met one of my best friends ever because of it (hey jessica if you're reading this) and just knowing that people will read stuff if i write it is kind of crazy and humbling. i poured so much of myself into this story and its characters - too much, probably - and i also want to point out that i didn't write about anything i myself haven't experienced firsthand. it's a lot of dark stuff and i have a hard time admitting to myself that i've gone through this dark stuff. it's even harder to admit it to other people, but i feel like i kinda did that, in writing this. 

 

 **so, i guess that's it!** thanks for reading, listening, bookmarking, and especially commenting. hope y'all are having good days and will stay tuned for whatever i write next. peace.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks. my tumblr is erelie.tumblr.com.


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